selling a myrtle beach home | Myrtle Beach Homes | Carolina Forest Homes

Feb 15 2016

Selling a Myrtle Beach Home- Leave During Showings

When selling your Myrtle Beach house, one of the biggest tips I can give to clients and to leave prior to the showing and leave the house vacant. The potential buyers want to have the ability to view the house freely without someone listening in or looming over their shoulder.

When the sellers are home, the potential buyers will not want to spend as much time viewing the home. Also, they will not speak freely as they don’t want to take a chance of offending the sellers. The best option is to leave the property and let the new buyers view the property with freedom with their agent.

If you have pets, I suggest taking the dog for a walk around the neighborhood, or loading them into the car and going for a drive. Also, there can be major liability to the potential sale of your property if you get into discussion with the buyers and their agent. While you think you might just be helping your cause by talking about how desperate you are to get this home sold because you have an offer on another property already, it can actually backfire on you.

The buyers & their agent will see that as someone desperate to get their home sold and they know you are on a tight timeline. They might offer you much less then because they know you are in need of a quick sale to keep from losing another home. If you are not present during the showing, then you won’t have anything to be concerned about with potential buyers or making them feel uncomfortable in your home.

If you are considering selling your home, contact me today to learn how my marketing plan can get your property exposed to over 37,000 people online within the first 24 hours of being placed on the market.

Oct 09 2014

Protect Yourself From Identity Theft When Selling Your Myrtle Beach Home

When selling your Myrtle Beach property it is imperative that your your home and your belongings are as safe as possible. There are professional theives that contact agents to view homes. They obviously are not wanting to see these homes to purchase, but to see what type of items they can pick up.

They may have visited during an open house, or seen a picture online of the home and think this home may be a good target. As an Myrtle Beach real estate agent, it is our duty to try and keep everyone together when showing a home, but if there is an entire family along, it is virtually impossible to keep an eye on everyone. The really good pros have partners that they visit with, or even bring along children to help cause distractions.

So, below are a few tips to help keep your house safe.

1. Put away all jewelry. If there is jewely laying around on a dresser or nightstand, it is a very big & easy target for someone to pick up. Either put the precious gems in a locked safe, or if you do not have one, place the gems in either a drawer or in a box. A safe place to place them is in a shoe box in the closet. Or, put in a flat envelope that you can hide in between stacked sweaters on a shelf.

There are plenty of ways to hide them. The key is to make sure they are out of site.

2. Hide the credit cards & bills. With the identity theft on the constant rise, it is crucial that any type of credit cards or mail that you have is secured. Place any mail or cards in either a filing cabinet that can be locked, or in a desk that can be locked. Crooks can be sneaky and will try and find a way to get alone in a house.

3. Remove the Personal Pictures. It is a good idea to put away any personal pictures. One of our clients that is a single woman was very uncomfortable having her house listed for sale because of safety.

One of our suggestions to her was to put away all the pictures that were just of her and only leave out the ones of her with her one cousin. Nobody knew if it was a husband, or relative. This gave her peace of mind.

4. Put away your money! You would think this one would be a no brainer, but I cant even begin to count the number of times I have gone to show homes that have had money sitting around on the kitchen table, or on a dresser, or nightstand. Sometimes there have been rather large amounts of money there too!

Like your jewelry, put this in a locked safe, or safe hidden place.

5. Hide anything with your name, address, phone number, social security number, etc… Just the other day I walked through a home that had prescription bags on the refrigerator with the persons name, telephone number, social security, and address. Some that you may not think of would be the kids softball schedule, or your nursery schedule for church.

These all have enough information that someone could use to steal from you. All they need is your name & phone number, they already have your address, and it can be a giant nightmare.

Here is a funny video, but I think gets the point across as to what could happen!

These are just 5 simple ways to protect yourself when selling your home. If you are currently thinking of selling your home, do not hesitate to contact me.

photos by: & , ,

Jun 24 2014

The Importance Of Online Marketing To Selling a Myrtle Beach Home

It’s no secret that selling your Myrtle Beach home can be a difficult task to do on your own. With all the new regulations on financing, and laws in place. With that being said, selecting the right real estate agent to sell your home is imperative. One of the most effective parts of selling a home is how the property is being marketed on the internet. Below is a list of items that are helping to sell homes. If you are thinking of selling your home, you may want to print this out to ask the real estate agent if your home will be marketed in these places.

Real Estate Website– Does the agent have an effective website that is drawing in buyers? Recent statistics show over 85% of all buyers begin their real estate search on the internet before even contacting an agent. Also ask the agent if they have their own domain name website instead of just the website provided by the company. For my team we have MyrtleBeachHomesBlog.com plus our local company, RE/MAX Southern Shores website. In addition, we have exposure the RE/MAX national site.
Real Estate 2.0- Social Networks & other websites are rapidly gaining in popularity. Buyers are using sites like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn & Twitter to find out the information about a community, the agent, and the surrounding areas before making contact with a real estate agent. Our use of social media helps expose our listings to our connections on Social Media which is now over 37,000!
Real Estate Blog– Buyers who begin their online searches are finding blogs each and every day with the information they are interested in. On average, consumers read over 27 blog posts every week. They are going to major search engines entering the keywords for information they want. If you have shared content related to the terms the consumer is searching, you have the potential to be found and gain their business.

Remember these three areas of effective marketing in the current real estate market. Unfortunately, just like many things in life, what is effective at one time may not work anymore now. You need an agent that stays on top of the market and keeps track of what is and is not working in selling homes.

An article I read in our local paper a while back confirmed that our marketing efforts are targeted in the right direction. The article shared about how the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce is focusing over 60% of their advertising towards internet marketing. 23.2% towards tv, 7% for newspapers, 5% on magazines 3% on radio & 1.8% on billboards. Just as the chamber has come to realize, in order to be effective with marketing the focus needs to be on internet advertising!

So in closing, when you are deciding on an agent to sell your Myrtle Beach Home, make sure that they have a strong online presence to help take your Myrtle Beach Home from listed to sold by giving your home it’s greatest exposure online.

photo by: bsabarnowl