Winning in Today's Market: How to Make Your Home Stand Out

From professional staging and photography to strategic marketing, discover the preparation that helps your home capture buyers' attention and generate stronger offers from day one. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

You're listening to the Idaho Live Show on this Saturday afternoon with Garrett Thil and Shelby Maxon. And before the break, we talked about pricing. So now we want to spend some real time here on the other side of the equation for preparation. Yeah. Because in our experience, Shelby, this is where most sellers either dramatically overdeliver and get rewarded or they underdeliver and they don't even realize how much money they actually left on the table.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

It's a big deal. It's a big deal. This is part I love talking about because it is so concrete. Pricing can feel like it an art, right? Yeah. It really can. And preparation is not art, it's a checklist. And if you follow the checklist, you put yourself in the top tier of listings in your price range automatically.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

Right out of the gate. Right out. So let's start with the staging portion because this is the one where I think there's can be a lot of confusion about. And some sellers they think automatically that staging means bringing in a truckload of brand new furniture and making the home look like a hotel suite. And other sellers may think, you know, staging can be unnecessary because their home is already looks really nice. And so Shelby, if you don't mind starting us off, this is kind of more your line of expertise here. If you could help walk us through what professionals staging kind of actually is.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Yeah, for sure. Staging at its best is about positioning the home so a buyer walks in and emotionally connects to the space with the first within the first 90 seconds.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

That's all it takes.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

It it's a sensory thing for sure. That's it. It is not about making the home look like a magazine cover. It is about helping the buyer mentally move in.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

Mentally move, and I like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

It's a big deal. It's a big deal. And what most sellers don't realize is that even a really beautiful home, if it's staged with the seller's personal style, it can prevent a buyer from making the emotional connection.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Yeah. And because the buyer is busy looking at all of a sudden they got family photos on the wall and they start paying attention to the kids' artwork and you know, your taste of the throw pillows instead of imagining kind of what their own life would be in this space.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We had a home come to us after it had been listed with another agent for several months with without selling. I think I remember this one, which you're going to talk about. Yeah. The sellers decided to pull the listing and reached out to our office. The home itself was gorgeous and in great condition, but it had a very specific design aesthetic, which yeah, bold colors, a very personal art collection, furniture that, while beautiful, made it harder for buyers to connect with the space.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

I mean, I remember it was really nice, Joe. It was really nice. It's just their style, which isn't everyone's style.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Yep, absolutely. At our office, staging isn't one of those add-ons or a nice to have. It's non- it's just a non-negotiable.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Yeah, we do it.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Yeah, we do it for everything. So you're selling your home. You deserve the best possible preparation to maximize for your result. Staging is a big part of that, and it's not an additional expense for the seller.

SPEAKER_02 2:56

Yeah. No, it's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Long story short, we we brought in our stager, toned things down, neutralized the spaces, and let the architecture of the home stand out.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

Which is amazing because now you've neutralized this property. Yeah. Right. It still has its own architecture, still has its own look to it, but it's still something that literally, I think anyone can walk in his house and go, wow, this is amazing. Yeah. Instead of having that taste in that specific property. So I think that's great. So so I want to be kind of clear about something so that everyone understands that at Edo Life, when sellers list with us, Shelby, that's something that the agents take on as an expense. You know, we feel like this is an investment that we're taking on their property. So we pay for the stager to come in. Yep. We want the home to shine. Even if it already shines in its own, you know, setting. We want to make sure that this is part of our service. Sellers never write a check. Have you ever had a seller write you a check for the staging?

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Absolutely not. So I wouldn't take it.

SPEAKER_02 3:57

No, exactly. So we invest into the listing because we know that it's going to return a lot of profit for the seller in the end.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Absolutely. And there are a lot of different approaches when it comes to staging. Some agents will recommend it and point sellers to the right in the right direction. For us, it's more hands-on than that. We, I'm sorry, when we say we stage a home, we mean we take care of the entire process. We coordinate it, manage it, and cover the cost. That's huge. I don't know a lot of people that are doing that in our industry. Our goal is to make sure our sellers don't have to figure that out on their own. We really want to take that off of them and that their home is presented at the highest level from day one.

SPEAKER_02 4:42

With minimal effort on their part, right? One hundred. Our job is we come in, have the professionals come in, do the work, make it look great. So, okay, so that's the staging part. So let's talk photography because I think this is an area where the gap between a great listing and you know mediocre listing is probably the most visible. In fact, I I know it is the most visible to a buyer that's scrolling through a website at 10 o'clock at night. Yeah. So share, share about that.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

97% of buyers start their home search online. That stat hasn't changed in years. So photos are the first showing, right? Because online. That's where people are looking first. If the photos don't get the buyer to schedule the in-person showing, nothing else you do as a seller matters.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

That's it. So your first impression you're saying is really online. It's not the moment from the walk through the door.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Oh no.

SPEAKER_02 5:31

So kind of explain what the photography package or that process looks like on every listing that we take.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Yeah. So fo professional photography is a baseline for us. Never an iPhone. Never an iPhone. Always a professional. And not just any photographer. These are photographers who specialize specifically in real estate. That's a that's there's a miss on that too, right? I mean, people that love shooting people, they're definitely gonna miss on capturing a home and and the beauty of it. It's just a different skill.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

The angles and the lighting, and and you can have different types of photographers, like you mentioned, people, you can have nature photographers, but then there is something different about the career that someone does in real estate photography.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Absolutely. This is their career, not something they do on the side.

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Yeah, absolutely. And and we're very selective about who we use, as as you know, you know, for for one. We're selected because first of all, we we carefully vet them, right? Because the difference between an average photo and really the right photo can make or break whether a buyer even walks through that door.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Exactly. Every listing gets HDR photography so you can clearly see both the interior and what's outside the windows at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 6:41

Which is a cool technique.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

It is cool. I don't know how to do it though.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

And beyond that, we're very intentional about how the home is presented. Every angle matters, every single photo matters.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

And when we get when you have these great photographers, they know us and they know our office. We like an abundance of photos, but we're going through every single photo to make sure that that tells the correct story about the house, right? We're not using it. Even in order.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

Once we receive the photos, we put them in order of when the person walks through the door so they can actually get a full scope of how the home flows.

SPEAKER_02 7:13

Very, very important. So that's you know, it's it's because really the first the first showing always happens online.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Right. And our photographers don't just shoot and send. Every single image is edited for lighting, consistency, and clarity. So the home shows at its absolute best.

SPEAKER_02 7:30

Yeah. And of course, this is never an added expense to the seller. This is an investment that that we make.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Absolutely. None of it goes to the seller. It's simply part of how we present every home we list.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

That's great. Okay. So now let's tech talk a little bit about the marketing reach, right? So because once you've got the staging right, the photos are done, they're done amazing. The next question is how many eyes actually see your listing?

SPEAKER_00 7:54

This is where a lot of sellers don't even know what to ask. They assume that all real estate listings end up in the same places. They don't. They really don't. Some agents put a listing in the MLS, and that's the extent of it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

And to be fair, I mean, the MLS does syndicate out to a lot of the big public sites. So I mean technically, if you're on the MLS, you're gonna be on Zillow. You're going to be on Realtor, on Redfin, kind of the big national ones.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Sure, sure. But there's a huge difference between passively being syndicated to a site and actively being promoted on a site, right? We syndicate every listing on 30 websites. We push every listing through paid social campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. We even invest thousands of dollars a month on Google ads every month to make sure we are specifically targeting high-intent buyers.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

Which is which is fantastic. So it's not just a passive way of marketing, it's what we call an active approach. And there's this buyer database too, which I think it's something that most sellers don't even realize that their listing should be marketed to.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

We have a database of over 27,000 buyers looking in the Treasure Valley in our system.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

And it's increasing every month, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:04

It's big time increasing. Every new listing gets sent out the morning. It hits the MLS through our own internal system at Idaho Life. It's a very intelligent platform we use specifically to match our clients with the right homes. So if it fits what a buyer is looking for, they're seeing it right away.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

Within sometimes minutes?

SPEAKER_00 9:23

I would say, yeah, maybe even the first minute. It's kind of cool. Yeah. Uh that means we're reaching buyers who honestly already are in the funnel. Right? Many of them are already pre-approved and already actively searching before the broader public even comes across the home.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

These are the serious buyers. And this is a database we have internally at the office, and it's just been building over the years. So it's great. And there's one more layer I wanted to add, which is the disclosure. So before the listing goes live, this is something that we want to encourage and help the sellers with. And we make sure that the property condition disclosure, it's called an RE25 in the state of Idaho. We want to make sure that's fully completed and buttoned up. That way, when the home hits the market, everything is already in place. It can be publicly shared, which really helps create the transparency up front when buyers can see the disclosures and it avoids a lot of potential issues later on down the road.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Yes. And Garrett, it builds buyer confidence by doing this. That's a good point. Right? Buyers can feel the difference between a home that has been professionally prepared and a home that's been thrown on the market hoping for the best. They feel it in, they feel it in the photography that we offer, they feel it in the disclosures, they feel it in the moment they walk through the front door.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

Yeah, that's absolutely right. All very, very important stuff. So when we come back, we're going to put a bow on all this because if you are a seller out there listening or thinking about making some plans, the most valuable thing we can leave you with is a list of questions you should be asking when you sit down with an agent. So don't go anywhere.