As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), the Department of Defense (DoD) expanded the Housing Assistance Program (HAP) to provide benefits to service members who are moving (in military jargon, PCSing – Permanent Change of Station), among others.

To be eligible for HAP, military members must have, 1) Purchased their home prior to 1 Jul, 2006, and 2) Have PCS orders dated 1 Feb 2006 thru 30 Sep 2012.

Have you heard of HAP?  Many service members have, but few homeowners understand just what it takes to sell their home using their Housing Assistance Program entitlement.  To educate service members, DoD and the Army Corps of Engineers have provided specific, informative guidance on their HAP website.

The website explains, among other things:

1.  Who Is Eligible

2.  How to Apply

3.  The Benefits HAP Provides

4.  Where HAP is Implemented

In addition, applicants are able to download the necessary application package  to be sent in for eligibility.  Their FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section, not only responds to the questions most of us have about applying and how the process works, but also provides updates on the Expanded program.

HAP is providing other ways for eligible members to get answers to their questions.  Coverage is handled by the three regional offices in Savannah, Fort Worth & Sacramento.  They do answer their phones and are ready to reply to questions about the program.  As well, representatives from the National Program Office will provide informational briefings if requested.

In the Fredericksburg and Stafford area, C21 AdVenture has been fortunate enough to host HAP’s Assistant Program Manager (PM), Mr. Donald Chapman, for an informational briefing last month for local Realtors.  While his presentation answered some of our HAP questions, the opportunity to ask questions was the perfect opportunity for him to dispel some of the misconceptions held about the program by those in attendance.   As a follow up, he’s returning in March to speak to a much larger audience of local military homeowners.

HAP leadership is pedaling as fast as they can in their attempt to inform military and civilian home owners who qualify, how to apply and participate in this timely offering.  To make this program work, all involved need to know what the requirements and expectations are.  Most endeavors take a little time to get off the ground, and this one is no exception.  They’ll certainly be bumps in the road for sellers and buyers who participate in this process.  Preparing yourself, by using the resources HAP is providing, may go a long way in making those bumps a bit more tolerable.

What’s the best way to market a home?  While making sure your visuals (pictures, virtual tours/videos) are exhaustive and don’t leave anything to the imagination, the details of the listing are just as important in attracting prospective buyers.

PROPERTY DETAILS

Properly listing a home requires much more than good visuals.  While they are important, providing the specifics of the home is a valuable aspect of marketing as well.  How many times has a client wondered about room sizes, while sorting through the homes they actually want to drop by to see, only to find that data is missing from the listing?  Is it in the best interest of the seller to include those room sizes in the listing?   Yes, it is.   What about a description that highlights the home’s best features? 

PAINTING A PICTURE

Providing a brief “highlight reel” of what the property has to offer is what the “REMARKS” narrative section of the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) is all about.  But, how well is it being used?   Is the agent painting a picture of the property’s best features?   Given the limited amount of available characters the MLS allows to describe the property, is the narrative accurate as well as compelling in describing the home?   Or, is the listing agent’s property description more fiction than fact?  When searching for prospective properties, since buyer’s agents do their best to match what their clients are looking for in a home with what’s indicated on the MLS, providing an accurate and complete depiction of the property, benefits the seller as well as the buyer.

Yard Signs & Lockboxes

Yard signs and lock boxes are tools of the trade that have long been staples of listing hardware.  While yard signs “mark the spot” of the home for sale, they also provide a visual alert to those who drive or walk by that the property is on the market.  Traditional signage emphasizes the name and number of the listing agency, and, oftentimes, the listing agent. 

But, some have taken advantage of the sign to provide more information of what the house has to offer through pictures.  This simple yet effective method of providing a glimpse inside the home may be the beginning of a more effective use of an old marketing method.    Jim Duncan, an agent from Charlottsville’s Nest Realty, uses signs to provide the property’s address, price, a website address for more property information, as well as the listing company’s contact information.  Oh, and there are property pictures as well.  A more effective way of making the most of the yard sign, don’t you agree?

A lock box is a lockbox is a lock box, right?  Well, not in Northern Virginia, right now.  Our ongoing controversy over which lock box is the best one is to use is currently very heated, often with more misinformation involved in the discussion, than accuracy.  The bottom line for a property listing is this;  make sure, whatever lock box is being used on a property, that fact is accurately included in the listing.  There are few things as frustrating for a Realtor, or a prospective buyer, than arriving at a property only to find it secured by a different lock box than that indicated on the MLS.

Getting the most out of the marketing avenues available when listing a home depends on knowing what tools are available, but more importantly, using those resources properly.  Every seller wants the widest exposure for their product.  As the Realtor’s Code of Ethics instructs them, it is a listing agent’s duty to act in the best interests of a client in fulfilling their marketing responsibilities.   Is your agent using the marketing tools available to properly showcase your home?  Let’s hope so.

Simply put, that’s a question best left up to the homeowner.  Or, is it?  Do homeowners know the market?  Do they know what it takes to get their home “under contract”?   Well, as many Realtors can attest, there are plenty of homeowners who think they know what’s required to get their home sold.  But, what’s to be done, how it’s to be done, and the importance of integrating the different marketing methods to successfully showcase a listing, is best left in the hands of the professional, the Realtor.

As the Listing Agent, Realtors are bound, according to Article 1 of their Code of Ethics, “to protect and promote the interests of the client.”   In other words, the agent is ethically obligated to use their best efforts to accomplish the client’s objective.  For most home sellers, this means a sale of the property in the least amount of time, for the best price and terms.   And, believe it or not, marketing a home consists of more than simply putting a sign in the yard and waiting by the phone for calls from prospective buyers.  There are a number of steps to take when marketing a home, some more important than others.  Let’s begin by looking at the essential steps first. 

What’s Necessary  

1.  Multiple Listing Service (MLS) – Job Number 1

Most home buyers use a Realtor to find and purchase a home.  Realtors use the MLS to find homes.  While there continue to be more and more “open source” alternatives to the MLS for locating homes for sale, the MLS, unlike the other platforms, is required to keep the accurate status of homes listed.  According to Article XII of the Metropolitan Regional Information Systems (MRIS) Rules and Regulations guidelines which govern the MLS, a property’s status must be updated within forty-eight hours of a change.   Frequently, other home listing sites like Realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia and others, will list a home as being actively “For Sale”, yet, in reality, the property is already sold, and the status of the property not updated for days, or, in many cases, weeks.  Yes, weeks!

Inputting listings into the MLS isn’t as seamless as one might imagine.  Well, it is a simple process, but how accurate, how extensive, and how many pictures are posted are entirely up to the agent.  If listing agents aren’t making the most of the MLS platform in advertising their listing, then they should be.  Agents should take the time to get complete home details from their sellers.  Buyer’s agents are depending upon the MLS for accurate information.  And, yes, more information and pictures ARE better. 

2.  Listing Syndication

Ubiquity – the state of being everywhere at once.  Yes, you want your home to be everywhere on the web.  Today, that’s where many prospective buyers first see the home they’re considering purchasing.  Of course, most home sellers want their home listed everywhere possible.  Do you think sellers want their property seen more than the competition?  Sure they do.

Our area MLS provider, MRIS, provides a listing syndication option available to Brokers.  This option, ListHub, provides brokers the ability to distribute their listings to other real estate property sites like Trulia, Zillow, Yahoo Real Estate, and many others.    Another similar property listing syndication service provider is Postlets.  And Postlets, unlike ListHub, is free. 

3.  Video and Pictures.

Let prospective buyers preview what they’re getting!  If a picture is worth a thousand words, you think a video is worth…maybe, ten thousand?  Well, that depends on the viewer, and more importantly, the quality of the video.  What is required for quality pictures and video? 

For quality pictures, you can find excellent digital cameras with plenty of megapixels for less than $250, that will meet your needs.  Using software designed to blend or “stitch” the pictures together, you can produce a virtual tour that effectively showcases and highlights the home’s best features.  While still photos give the home viewer a good idea of what’s inside the home, using software that provides panoramic views and tells a story of the home at the same time, completes the picture.  Real Estate Shows is an inexpensive tool that accomplishes this task.   Visual Tour costs a bit more, and does a little more.  Using video, the production is even better.  

Another program that offers a few more thrills, and also uses video for its productions, is AgentCasts.  Whether using video or still pictures, they provide a menu of services and costs that’ll meet your needs, and provide a quality finished product.

Something as simple as the Flip Video or Kodak Zi6, costing less than $175, might be tempting to use for filming the home video, but don’t sell yourself, and your client, short.  While it’s not necessary to spend thousands to get quality video, spend a few hundred more than a Flip and utilize the enhanced capability of a better camera to showcase your property in the best light. 

For software programs, Microsoft’s Windows Movie Maker, included in most Windows packages, is a simple but powerful video editing package for creating movies, or short videos. 

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you’ve never used it, don’t worry.  As they say, “even a 6th grader can do it”!   Just go to YouTube.com and you’ll find instructional videos on how to use Movie Maker.   You’ll find a number of “how to” videos with very good instructions on how to use the program.

There’s lots to do in marketing a home for sale.  Using the MLS, and plenty of photos of the property, or, even better, video, are important first steps in showcasing the home for interested agents and home buyers.  But, the devils in the details.  Great pictures, video, and a detailed listing may draw buyers in, but the finer points of the listing that comprise the marketing strategy developed with your seller(s) are just as important to success.   Its those details we’ll examine when we complete the marketing discussion.