Create a Website for Each Property Listing

e-Newsletter coach, Michael Katz, recently put his home on the market. What he found, though, was that the descriptions of his home on Realtor.com didn’t come close to differentiating his house from all the other similarly priced homes in the area. So he created a website to describe just what it is that made his home a great buy. You can check it out at www.28WestElm.com.

Katz decided that instead of focusing on features, he’d tell stories about his house. In his latest newsletter, Katz gives to great examples of why use stories:

Stories add warm flesh to the dry bones that are features.…

It’s one thing for me to tell you that my property is 1.44 acres. It’s something else entirely for me to show you a photo of my kids skating on a 70 x 30 foot ice rink in the front yard, accompanied by this snippet: “Sure, we could all skate across the street on the pond, but that’s a three or four times a year event. As close as it is, it’s still a hassle. My kids are out on our rink every single day, all winter long, and it’s like a magnet for their friends (plan on going through a lot of hot chocolate).”

Suddenly, 1.44 acres means something…

Stories are hard to steal.

One thing I’ve noticed since putting my house on the market is that at first blush, most homes seem to have the same stuff: bedrooms, basements, kitchens, decks, etc. I can use all the flowery adjectives I like to describe my particular stuff, but in general, all you hear is “blah, blah bathroom,” “blah, blah, screen porch.”

If, on the other hand, I tell you the story of my screen porch, and describe how I, “‘dedicated an entire weekend to installing new screen wherever it was needed. I even spent half a day crawling around underneath the porch floor (yuck) with a staple gun in one hand and a roll of screen in the other, just to secure the floor from bugs,” I own it. Nobody else can tell my story (authentically).

Katz just put up his house website, so he can’t declare success just yet - but if you’re looking for a way to differentiate your clients’ homes, give this approach a try.