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One school of thought among some agents is to never use flyers, but to make people call for information.
1. They hope or claim they can sell the listing better with a warm call.
2. If they cannot sell that house, they want a shot at converting the caller into a buyer and possibly a listing for a current home.
Adhering to the school of thought that spreading information as far as possible as easily as possible is service to my seller/clients, I do flyers in a proper flyer box, QR Codes laminated and stuck to the sign post that will take you to the photo tour with description, and a URL/domain for the property on a sign rider.
Our realtor here in GA did this exactly and our house sold very quickly. I saw people take flyers, use the QR Code & also write down the phone number or website from the sign. It all is good.
One school of thought among some agents is to never use flyers, but to make people call for information..................
There is an agent in my area who is a marketing dynamo. He knows every trick to push through a sale.
I despise him. I won't call him for information on his listings because as soon as he gets hold of any of your information, it is worse than having a pack of rabid insurance salesmen descend upon you. You can't shake him off, and he sells, sells, sells. It's all very annoying. I would never list a house with him and I can't imagine needing a house so badly that I would buy one of his listings, even with my own agent to shield me from him.
On the subject of flyers, I was out with my son today. He owns three properties in one neighborhood and is gathering information to put on four new houses. So, we drive by his property and around the corner is a house for sale. He slams on the brakes, backs up, looks at the house, and says to me, "Jump out and get me one of the flyers".
"No, sorry. There isn't a flyer box".
OK, so he looks to see what office has the property listed so he can call them later. Then we go and look at property and look at a dozen new houses under construction (shopping for a builder) and then we do a shopping trip to Home Depot. When we get home, he installs a new heater and a couple of new light fixtures.
Will he remember that he wanted to call the real estate agent who listed that house? He might. He might not. Can he buy it if he wants it? Yes, he can. Is he interested in buying it? He doesn't know that without knowing what the price is. He could have got the price off of a flyer. Will he bother to call the agent to get the price and have to listen to a hard sell before he can get the price? Maybe.
Our local multiple listing has a website open to the public that has become almost impossible to use. They don't seem to want to fix it. Otherwise, I would look the house up online.
There is absolutely no way to look at the outside of a property and know whether or not it is worth calling about. Buyers have a price range. It wastes everyone's time for house hunters to call on every house that looks nice but is not in their price range.
I think it depends on your local market. Where I lived in NY, not done. But not a ton of people relocating from out of state.
Where I live now, it's common, but it's a transplant heavy area - when we made trips down, we collected those flyers in neighborhoods we were interested in because otherwise we never would have remembered which house was which.
I can't see anyone ever thinking it was a bad thing. As I said, not done where I am from, and when I saw it I was intrigued and thought it was very clever.
We live in the Virginia part of the Washington D.C. suburbs, about two miles outside of the Capitol Beltway.
One realtor suggested they prepare a flyer describing the house and giving the selling price along with some photos of the interior. They would put the flyers in a box attached to the 'For Sale' sign in front of the house so people can take them.
Someone who recently sold their house thought this is an out-of-date marketing tool and may make the sellers look desperate to find a buyer, so the buyers would be inclined to offer a lower price.
What do you think? Thanks for offering your opinions.
This is a must if you want to sell that house! Give everyone the opportunity to know what it looks like & what it costs! No marketing is antiquated when it comes to selling a home.
I think that I find it very irritating when there is a flyer box outside a house with no flyers in it. A lot of agents are too lazy to refill the flyer box. I also want to see the price and the square footage.
I suggest that you use a nice photo of the exterior and not include photos of the interior. Let people who want to see the inside of the house call your agent and make an appointment.
I've purchased two houses from flyers, and one house from an open house. At one time, a next door neighbor sold his house when he had a garage sale and one of the garage sale customers got the flyer out of the box.
I often stop and pick up a flyer if the house looks interesting. If the size and price look good, I'll call my agent and take a look.
OP, a lot of it is a numbers game. You have to reach as many people as possible.
This. Nearly every time I viewed a home with those boxes, there were no flyers left, which I also find irritating. Why have a empty box? So I say no on the flyers not because it isn't an effective selling tool, but just because realtors probably won't keep the box filled up.
This. Nearly every time I viewed a home with those boxes, there were no flyers left, which I also find irritating. Why have a empty box? So I say no on the flyers not because it isn't an effective selling tool, but just because realtors probably won't keep the box filled up.
They do get emptied, and if the agent is an hour behind, or the homeowner is going to stock them when they get home from picking up the kiddos at school, from the stash of flyers the agent gave them, that is exactly when you come around. LOL
That is the value of a QR Code posted on the sign or flyer box.
You can get a lot more information right there on your smartphone in a minute than you will with a typical flyer. And, no one takes them down, like some people will clean out a flyer box 30 minutes after the agent goes down the street.
They do get emptied, and if the agent is an hour behind, or the homeowner is going to stock them when they get home from picking up the kiddos at school, from the stash of flyers the agent gave them, that is exactly when you come around. LOL
That is the value of a QR Code posted on the sign or flyer box.
You can get a lot more information right there on your smartphone in a minute than you will with a typical flyer. And, no one takes them down, like some people will clean out a flyer box 30 minutes after the agent goes down the street.
I agree, Mike. I'm not accusing the realtor of laziness. They probably don't have time to keep them filled. The majority of listing agents I know don't go to homes unless they're showing or meeting some other professional hired by the potential buyer at the house. They are very busy with their jobs and have many showings/closings etc. . . But if they don't have time to check the box frequently, don't have a box. I don't think a potential buyer should have to scan some QR code to find information that should be on a flyer which doesn't exist because it's not there. Personally, I find QR codes almost as useless as CAPTCHA codes because many times they don't work. But it may just be my phone and/or user error
I think its just a numbers game, an inefficent one at that. My neighbors house across the way is currently listed and has a flyer box. The house in on the main street coming into the community so has VERY high traffic flow. He cannot keep that box full, Ive been doing yardwork and spent a few hours watching people stop by and grab flyers. At some points it seemed like every car that drove by stopped and grabbed one. I asked him how the showings are going and he said he had two last week. TWO. They had to have printed HUNDREDS of flyers.
As we move to a more tech savvy market of homebuyers I think it would simply be more efficient to put the specs of the house on the For sale sign to take a picture of with the smartphone instead of having flyers. Or the barcode that links to the listing.
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