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This is a continuation of our discussion about how to sell your house in a weekend using an auction. This particular article discusses the role that yard signs play in the process (a rather important role I might add).
In my opinion, yard signs and your directional signs are the most important steps you’ll have in your marketing plan to sell your house in a weekend. You throw in classifieds and I think you’ve got the majority of it covered. All of the other ones are like extra super power marketing that you’re going to add to the mix in order to get more people than you need to come to your open house on Saturday and Sunday and bid on Sunday night.
Yard signs are the signs that are put in the yard of the house to let people know that you are having an open house and that the house is for sale. A lot of people are gonna see your yard sign, and that’s how they’re going to come to the open house. That’s how they’re going to find out that the house is for sale. The yard sign that we use, you can go onto the website and see a sample of some example yard signs we’ve used in order to sell a house.
You can use more traditional ones like “Open House” with the dates and the times you’re gonna have it. Put those on the sign for the whole week, so that people know exactly when it’s gonna be there. You have the option of putting the starting bid price on there. So you put up the house you say – opening bid at $145,000, and this is a $200,000 house. People can get an idea that they may be able to get a good deal on this house, and they’ll be interested. One thing I would definitely do on the yard sign is put a link to your 24-hour recorded information line to get additional information on the house. And we’re going to talk a little bit about 24-hour information lines later on in other articles, but the company I recommend can be found on the free downloads page. It is extremely reasonable. They just call into that number, and you have a voicemail box where they can get all the information about the house.
You can take the calls live and give all this information out as they call you live. I don’t recommend this.
You’re a real estate investor, you’re in this business, you need to automate your systems. It is my opinion you should actually use a 24-hour recorded information line. Record the information once, doing a really good job on your information line, and that will play every time someone calls. You know they’re getting the full, exact same message that everyone else is getting. Take your time, and I’ll give you an example of some of the things you could say on the information line in another article. Make sure that you get a really good recording on there where people can get their information.
So you put the 24-hour information line on the yard sign. When potential buyers call, they get the information they need and then on that recording you can have your live answer telephone number in case they do have additional questions about it. Now, one of the things we do with one of the voicemail services we use is that every time someone calls into that number, we capture their telephone number. Actually, we capture their telephone number, name and address, but you don’t need the name and address unless you’re planning on doing direct mail marketing. The nice thing about being able to capture their telephone number is that you can then take all those telephone numbers of people who have contacted you for information, so these are people that have contacted you and you have a relationship with them, then you can send out a voice blast on Friday afternoon saying:
“Thanks for calling to get information about the house we have for sale at 1234 Main Street. Please come out to the open house tomorrow and Sunday between 12 p.m. and 5 p.m., so that you can see the inside of the house”.
So potential buyers called; they may or may not have actually called you and talked to you live, but they called the 24-hour recorded information line. And now you’re calling the number they called from back and leaving a message on their answering machine or playing a voice broadcast message to them. When you call them back on Friday afternoon or Saturday, whenever you decide to do it, to get more people to remind them that you’ve got this house and what a deal the house is. So, that’s one of the things you would do by capturing people’s information on those lines.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. If you have not yet seen the special free downloads page for real estate investors, check it out now.
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Using yard signs at your properties is a major part of your marketing plan. Use the Yard Sign Checklist as a reminder of things to check and do when putting out your yard signs.
The position of the yard sign can have a significant impact on the signs effectiveness. You want the sign positioned for maximum visibility by drive-by traffic so have the signs facing such that drivers can read it while driving by. Usually this means that it is not facing the house and one directly facing the road, but it is facing perpendicular to the road so that it could be read driving in either direction on the road from a distance.
I recommend using your 24 Hour Recorded Information Line number on your yard signs and give additional information about the property on the message. Of course, after they listen to the message you should give them a way to contact you directly either with a local number or by pressing an extension depending on how your phone system is setup.
In many markets you will need to make sure your yards signs are still up on a regular basis because they have a tendency to disappear.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. For a limited time you can download the Secret Property Management Tips and Tricks real estate course for free.
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In some markets you will find using the Bandit Sign Checklist an inexpensive and highly effective marketing strategy for buying and selling properties. In other markets you will find it very effective for aggravating people and upsetting the police or enforcement officers charged with removing and enforcing sign related laws.
In the city I live in, there is a hefty per sign fee charged so I tend not to use bandit signs to market to buy houses.
In other cities I have bought it, I have used signs very effectively to generate calls from sellers and buyers (depending on the sign).
If you are going to do as I recommend and hire someone to put your bandit signs out for you, be sure to establish the rules up front: you will need to check to make sure they did the work before they will get paid and they need to call you when they are done so you can go and check them. You then must go and check them to make sure the majority of the ones they claimed they put up are actually still up. Some of them will actually be pulled down by competitors and concerned citizens, but the majority of them should remain up long enough for you to check them a couple of hours after posting them.
Until my next post,
James
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Similar to the Marketing to Sell Checklist, the Marketing to Rent Checklist is used to occupy properties quickly.
The checklist utilizes the same three key marketing methods for attracting buyers and renters to your properties as shown in the diagram below.
Just posting ads on CraigsList (and your other local Rental Websites), using Yard Signs along with directional signs leading to the property to all major roads and your internal buyers list will ultimately be responsible for 80% or more of your results.
Of course, going the extra distance and doing extra marketing will help expand your buyers list, give you a larger pool of potential tenants to choose from and possible occupy your properties even faster.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. If you have not downloaded our Secret Property Management Tips and Tricks real estate investor audio course you may want to take advantage of the limited free download of that program that we are offering.
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