Selling A Home In Austin – Location, Location, Location. Photos. Photos. Photos!

It’s true that the location of your home in Austin has a huge bearing on it’s desirability. An important part of marketing your home is putting the right information where people are looking, and the Austin Multiple Listing System has just been upgraded to get more info in front of buyers.

If you’re fishing, you can have the tastiest bait in the world, but if your hook is in the wrong part of the water, none of the fish are going to find it. It’s the same with marketing your home for sale. You have to put it in the right place, in front of the right buyers.

Every year, the National Association of REALTORS publishes a survey on home buying trends. In it, they chart such things as where people start looking for homes, and also where buyers find the homes they end up buying. Taking this into account when marketing a home for sale can make a big difference.

Where Do Buyers Find Their Homes? Well the top three sources in 2008 were Real Estate Agents, the Internet, and Signs, making up 81%. Since this is a national statistic, and Austin has a younger and generally more technically adept population, you might expect that this number may be higher here.

What Are Buyers Looking For? The chart below shows that photos are the most important thing to buyers searching on the internet for homes. The quality of the photos you use to market a home has a huge impact on how many people come out to take a look at it. That’s why I use a professional photographer when marketing homes.

What’s changed in Austin that home sellers should know about? The Austin MLS has recently been upgraded to increas the maximum number of photos allowed per listing.

While large numbers of photos were previously the domain of virtual tours only, now you can add up to 25 images for each property for sale in the MLS.

How many Realtors Are Taking Advantage of the new capabilities? Some, but not all. Here’s a chart I pulled last week from the MLS for all the single family homes in Austin. The previous maximum number of photos was 12.

The last home I marketed in the UT area had 23 images in the MLS which puts it in the top 3% of Austin listings!

In summary, a third of home buyers find the actual home they buy on a web site, photos are the most important thing on a home website, and the Austin MLS now allows up to 25 photos to let buyers see what your home has to offer. To most effectively market your home, I recommend using a professional photographer to take 25 or more photos.

An Austin Realtor is a Realtor who provides data-backed marketing advice for Austin home sellers. You can search Austin homes for sale at his website.