Public Relations is Important for Sellers and Buyers of Real Estate

December 6, 2007 |

Facebook was once the belle of the Silicon Valley ball. Now, not so much.

Much of the recent drop in the favorable popularity of the social networking giant can be traced to the controversy surrounding the release of their advertising platform, Beacon. You don’t need to understand all the details of the Beacon release, but understanding the poor handling of the public relations situation it created could be helpful to you in your real estate transactions.

Beacon was released to much fanfare, but upon further examination very serious concerns were raised about the privacy of Facebook users. Much ado was made about this concern from very prominent people in the Internet industry. At first, Facebook did nothing. It then tried to change the way the program functioned. This didn’t assuage the onslaught of negative press. After many openly questioned why Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was being silent on the whole issue, the negative press had reached its peak.

Yesterday, Zuckerberg issued an apology for the whole mess. Better late than never, I guess.

PR Matters to Sellers

Everyone knows that PR is important to multi-million (or in Facebook’s case, Billion) dollar corporations. There are many jobs and tons of money at stake. PR can be just as important to you if you are buying or selling your home. While you may not have billions of dollars at stake, the reward or loss is significant, nonetheless.

When you are selling your home, you can think of the transaction as one gigantic PR campaign. You want to put the best possible face on your home at all times. This means that you want to convey quality, benefit and value not only through the marketing of the home, but also through the physical appearance of the home. It is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL that the message conveyed through the marketing of the home is consistent with the physical appearance of the home.

One of the issues central to the Facebook debacle was that the perception of trust and caring that Facebook had spent years building was undone in an instant by one ill-conceived advertising platform. In short, users had come to expect one thing, but were delivered something entirely different. YOU DO NOT WANT PROSPECTIVE BUYERS TO FEEL THIS WAY.

Do whatever you can to put the most positive face on your home at all times. Don’t lie. Present an accurate picture, but make sure that the picture is ultimately consistent with what the prospective buyers are going to find when they view the home in person. Nothing is more frustrating to buyers than arriving at a home to find out that it was not what they were lead to believe it was.

PR Matters to Buyers, Too

PR is important for buyers, as well. This is especially true when it comes time to make an offer. A real estate transaction may be a major financial transaction, but when it comes to someones’ personal home, there is a lot of emotion involved as well. As much as sellers want to make the most possible money on the sale of their home, they also want to feel that their home is being sold to good people who will care for the home in the same way that they did. Buyers should do their best to meet both of these needs.

On the financial side, buyers must show that they are able to buy the home. Having loan pre-approval prior to writing a contract can go a long way to keep sellers fears at bay. Every seller has a little fear that the buyer will not be able to afford the house or get loan approval. Pre-approval can help calm this fear.

During the course of the negotiation, it is good to keep in mind that their will be some give and take. No one wants to sell a home to people who just take, take, take. You are going to have to give a little. You want to be firm, but you want to be as friendly as possible at the same time. It won’t always work, and it won’t guarantee that the seller will be agreeable, but it is much better than the alternative.

Mistakes are OK

Everyone is going to make a PR mistake at one point or another. I think Facebook proved that. Mistakes are OK, as long as you work quickly to correct them and work even harder to learn from your mistake and prevent a similar thing from happening in the future. We can’t be perfect all of the time. We can, however, be vigilant in preventing the same mistake from occurring over and over again.

One way of doing this is listening to people and their feedback. As a seller, you will probably get feedback on your home. You don’t have to follow all of it, but you should listen to all of it. Take it all in, and evaluate whether or not their is something you could be doing better.

As a buyer, you should be listening to the needs of the seller. Try to find out as much as you can about the seller and what they want. Your agent will most certainly be doing this through the seller’s agent. Try to meet the seller’s needs wherever it will benefit you to do so. Remember– you want to make the seller want to sell the home to you. Offering them help when you can is one way to create this feeling.

Remember to Keep PR on Your Mind

No one is exempt from the power of good (or bad) PR. The damage done to Facebook by their recent mishandling of their PR won’t be known for a while. Don’t make a similar mistake. When you are preparing to buy or sell a home, remember the power of PR. Keep it in mind at all times. Doing so will give you the best possible chance to achieve your real estate goals.

Posted by Daniel Rothamel | Filed Under Buying, Selling, Video Posts 

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