Northville, Novi, Canton, Plymouth Michigan Real Estate - Homes for Sale

The Truth About Print Media Ads

Here’s another "dirty little secret" of the real estate industry: the only real reason that your Realtor would happily pay anywhere from $350 to $1,500 per month just to place your home in a real estate magazine or "homes publication" is to generate leads for him or her self! We must be honest and tell you that we’ve advertised in these magazines for many years. Historically, we’ve done this because for the longest time this was effectively "the only game in town" in terms of promoting our listings, outside of the MLS. But, as technology has evolved and the internet has become more and more of the game of real estate, print media advertising has become less and less significant. As evidence that buyers are flocking to the internet to search for homes, the 2005 National Association of Realtors’ "Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers" states the following:

These percentages have increased dramatically from the prior year (the point: the internet has become “it” in terms of where buyers go to find homes, which is why we created this website and list our homes on Realtor.com!). Back to the point. We’ve been spending around $1,500 per month for two decades to place our listings in homes magazines. Have we EVER sold a home because of this advertising? Of course. But very, very few. The return on this investment has been HORRIFIC. Mostly, we’ve picked up buyers that were looking to buy, and, from that perspective, such advertising is not a total loss. However, as a SELLER, this does not matter to you.

According to industry statistics, less than 3% of the prospective home buyers who respond to any forms of advertising actually purchase the property they initially called about. More than 97% of the time these prospective home buyers purchase OTHER properties that were shown to them by their agents after their initial response to advertising. Why? In many instances, these prospective home buyers, when interviewed by real estate agents and lenders, realized that they are financially qualified for either higher or lower housing prices than the advertised homes they're initially were interested in. The majority of the prospective home buyers who responded to the advertising expressed specific requirements for their homes which were usually quite different from the homes they called on.

The bottom line: any agent that tells you how wonderful their print media advertising program is is simply blowing smoke. What sells houses is effective internet marketing, diligent follow up with quality agents, mailings to neighborhoods and networking with our massive list of past clients. Which are precisely the things we do for each and every one of our listing clients!