Selling Your Home Yourself: Part 2 - Marketing

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Article by Your Home & Garden deputy editor Christine McBride.

Once you’ve got your paperwork in order, it’s time to market your property. There are various ways you can do this, including newspaper advertisements, online advertisements, a sign outside the house, or fliers on community notice boards and in letterboxes in your neighbourhood.

Advertising on TradeMe is probably one of the best and cheapest options. It has a number of advantages, including the fact that you can list multiple photos, write as much as you like about the house’s good points, and it is accessible 24 hours a day. It will cost about $200 to list your property on TradeMe for as long as it takes for the property to sell. The listing will expire every month, but you can relist as many times as you like at no charge.

Property sections in newspapers offer several different types of advertisements, and charges are based on the size of the ad. You should list price, type of house, open home times, your contact details and the address. (Don’t forget this – I once did!). The advantage of a newspaper is that it’s very portable; people can pick up the paper and drive around for the day looking at houses.

Fliers are always a good addition to your marketing strategy, but probably won’t pull in the buyers like TradeMe, newspaper advertising, and a sign outside the house. You never know though – you only need one buyer, and the wider you spread your net, the better.

Before you list your house anywhere, think about your market. If your house would be attractive to someone wanting a do-up, market it as that. Don’t describe it as a castle if it’s not – you’ll just waste potential buyers’ time. Don’t think that saying your house could use some TLC will decrease your chances of selling; there’s an enormous pool of people good at DIY who want to stamp their personality on a place.

Conversely, if your house is a perfect mansion, play up those features. Let people know what you expect; there’s no point pulling buyers through the door who have budgets $200,000 less than your asking price.

It’s the prerogative of each seller to decide whether or not to list an asking price. But when I was looking for a house, I got fed up with ‘POA’ listings. There were lots of houses I simply didn’t go to because finding out whether they were in my price range was just too much trouble. You want to make it easy for buyers, and certainly at the lower end of the market, price is first thing buyers are looking at

At the upper end though, people might be more likely to take the time to look through a house without a price indication.

The next step: when the marketing is done, it’s time to prepare your house for open homes.

For more ways to increase the value of your property, head to Your Home & Garden.

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