Matchmaker

Selling houses is a bit like match making (cue the music “match maker, match maker make me a match, find me a find, catch me a catch…”). Just like every person has a “most likely” mate, every house has a “most likely” buyer and our job is to find that buyer.


The first thing we do when preparing marketing materials for a new listing is think about who might be drawn to the home. Is it a Center Square townhouse in Albany? It’s probably going to attract young professionals. A three bedroom, one and a half bath bungalow in the ‘burbs? That will likely appeal to a couple with a preschool child looking to get into a good school district. Seems obvious right? But what about if that bungalow was a cape? Parents of preschoolers don’t like the idea of their children being on a different floor at night so the ideal buyer could have at least school age children or may be someone looking to downsize and have the option of a first floor bedroom. Ranches appeal to people looking for single floor living. But if it needs updating, a ranch will more likely appeal to buyers who are looking for deal and willing to tackle the requisite projects.

Every house has strengths and limitations and our job when marketing is to focus on highlighting the strengths (our job when pricing is to accurately account for the limitations, but that’s a discussion for another blog post). We strive to take it a step further by not just generically listing a home’s strengths but rather really getting inside the head of the potential buyer and focus on the home’s features that will appeal to them. We paint a picture of how they will live in the house and what they will enjoy about it. If the home is likely to appeal to a family, it’s critical to describe the neighborhood, to highlight the yard, to point out the storage spaces. If it’s empty nesters we are after, then we are sure to highlight all of the improvements that have been done and to focus on design features that appeal to clients looking to downsize.

Clients trust us to market their homes in a way that gets them sold quickly and for the most amount of money. Understanding who the most likely buyer is doesn’t mean precluding other buyers, it just means honing our marketing materials so that our listings are noticed. We don’t make things up and we can’t coerce someone buy a home that they don’t want to buy, but we can entice buyers to take a closer look and if you take a look at our marketing materials, I hope you will agree that we do that pretty well.