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It seems that realtors in our area have stopped the Sunday newspaper ads. They feel everyone is internet savvy and can find their way to their web page. I'm thinking, "Why do I need a realtor if they don't advertise?" I can put my house on various sites myself. 6% is 6%. I think the realtors are leading up to their own demise in this area. Your opinion please.
I still advertise, many people are still not internet proficient so RE magazines and newspapers still find buyers. When I worked outside RE in IT I was always amazed by how many executive and mid to upper level management had administrative person to read and send email or do research.
It is expensive, I budget $1000 a month for paper ads.
But to your point, if the only reason you list with a Realtor is advertising then you aren't dealing with the right Realtor.
You may be able to get it on some of the sites but not every one I would be on.
There are also add ons that I would have that would not be fiscally sound for you to invest in for just the sale of one home, such as the virtual tour.
That being said I still do print but I have never used the newspapers, I find certain magazines have much better response.
I haven't advertised in newspapers since Jan. 07 and haven't missed them one bit. Used to run sunday ads every week and never got leads from them. I use that money on internet ads now and get way more leads than I ever got from the newspaper. Print advertising is expensive and yields very few results.
I haven't advertised in print for five years, and stopped magazine ads in July 2007. I found magazine ads garnered more calls about a property than the newspaper in my area. Print is just too expensive and gets no results.
If all real estate agents to bring to the party is that we place an ad in a magazine or newspaper on behalf of a seller, then we aren't worth too much. Staging homes has replaced newsprint in my area.
I'm a gated community in Florida. My buyer may be elderly and not computer literate. How does he/she find my house if you won't advertise?
It's not obvious to me if you are a real estate agent, or a seller or what.
Anyway, people rarely bought a house off a newspaper ad, when ads were the only form of advertizing done. At best, a buyer may have called about the ad and connected with the listing agent who was delighted to match buyer needs with local inventory, listed within the MLS.
Print ads were intended to make the phone ring, not sell the property being advertized, which at best, may have contained a fuzzy picture of the exterior.
You'd be surprised how many elderly people are computer literate (some of us have been around computers for longer than the young whippersnappers today have been on the planet!). Sun City is next door to our office and even has its own computer club.
That being said, our office still runs a weekly ad in the Sunday paper for our little town. Why? Certainly not because an ad in that paper has ever brought in a buyer in the past 5 years! But the seller's want to see their house in the paper, so we oblige them.
The sales come from a variety of places, but the newspaper, these days, is way down on the list of places where buyers are found. I do some targeted print ads - equine publications, mostly, for horse-suitable properties, and those ads go online for those publications, as well - you have to put them in the print version to get them online.
So, if you're picking your agent based on your desire to see your house in the newspaper, and that's what you want, by all means, use that as a defining criteria. If you want an agent to market your house to where the greatest number of buyers are likely to see it, pick a professional real estate agent who has a good marketing plan, whether or not it includes newspaper advertising, and let them do their job. Which only starts with marketing the property, by the way.
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). Sun City is next door to our office and even has its own computer club. 
