Listing Week Madness

It’s Saturday morning. The smoke has made its way back and my view is shaded by this smelly mist. It was way worse during the week, but it’s definitely back. I'm drinking coffee, writing and prepping for the open houses this weekend. A week ago, we were staging the same home as a family effort. 

On Monday we had to skip drone pictures on my listing because they would have been waste of time as there was no visibility. There was no way of getting a decent picture of the valley, let alone the mountains behind. It was quite a bummer that there was no way of getting the view from all those windows and decks. Two hours of photos and takes and retakes and switching angles. When we were done my back was aching as I was rushing to my next appointment.

Tuesday, I worked on the marketing pieces trying to figure out how to squeeze the beauty of this home into a few hundred words. There are times when it’s hard to find words to describe the best sides of a home, however with luxury properties there’s usually an abundance of greatness than needs to be condensed. In the afternoon, when I got the photos from my amazing picture guy Paul, I plugged them into the brochure and uploaded 25 photos to MLS. If you’ve ever wondered why almost every home for sale has 25 pictures, it’s because you can have 25. You don’t have to, you’ll have to have one - the front of the house – anything else is extra. The art is in creating a story, a flow of the home instead of just photos in random order. Which way would you tour the home if you walked in the door? What would you see first? Where would you go then? Is there something you might miss if it wasn’t pointed out?

Wednesday, last meeting with the clients to go over the marketing plans, answer questions and to learn to use the movie theater. Yes, this home comes with a real movie theater. Not just a room with a screen and a couple of couches, but a room with theater seating, fully reclining seats, projector room, movie theater lighting and a built-in sound system. This was the point when my three kids thought we should just go ahead and buy this home.

And then came Thursday. Listing day. Some last touches. Sign was delivered in front of the house. Brochures arrived and for a moment I was super excited… until I noticed they had an error. Quick fix with my office team, and we have something to get us over the weekend until I can get the corrected version on Monday. An error on a marketing piece isn’t the end of the world but it for sure spiked my stress level up. There have been times when the yard sign never came or something way more crucial went wrong. In the end, we have a brochure just not on the fancy cardboard.

And then. One click, and we are live. The home is officially for sale.

I hop back in the car, deliver the key box to the house, stick the booties into the bootie basket, stick arrow signs all over the neighborhood and return to my office. If it were another house, I would have delivered the key in the morning, but this one was right next to my office and my client wanted the brokers to call me before showing, hence going live first and then delivering the key.

The rest of the afternoon I work on online marketing. Send an email marketing piece to the world. Send another one to all the brokers on my email list, let me tell you, there’s quite a few. Send photos to our Global Luxury department for presentation, start Facebook and Instagram campaigns, Tweet, Pinterest, and share on Linked-In. Rinse and repeat.

MLS 1346393