7 Creative Ways to Market Your Property in a Cold Housing Market

In This Article

Properties are not getting multiple offers and selling within hours of listing anymore. Things have calmed down a bit across most of the country, and properties are now sitting on the market. The traditional method of listing your property with a real estate agent and waiting for people to buy isn’t going to cut it anymore, unless you price very aggressively.

What can you do? The market has gotten a bit cold – showing a definite slowdown. If you insist on hollding out for top dollar, you may get a bit creative . . .

What about?
1. Auctions
I recently read about setting up an auction to sell your property. Basically, you list your property at a reasonable price under market value, and let people bid on it. Market this auction with flyers and word of mouth, then invite people over. Hopefully, you will draw interest and your property will sell.

2. Use all the mania in social networking to create buzz.
Create a simple website for your property, then post creative titles on the social sites like del.icio.us or reddit.

3. Use that myspace or linkedin network to let people know about your property.

4. Make a short film about the property and post it on YouTube.
Same goes for taking pics and Flickr (see #5 for more)

5. Get a picture of a celebrity on your property
Put the picture online. Sell the house that (pick your celeb) was at

6. Buy a billboard in the neighborhood.

7. Offer a year of free Pizza to the buyer
This can be substituted with a year of Starbucks (legal crack), a beer of the month subscription, or anything else addicting as incentive. Those plasma screens are a dime a dozen nowadays.

What it all truly comes down to is pricing, location, and marketability. If the place is a hole, you’re going to have a tough time selling unless you’re marketing to the people looking for holes (rehabbers). Spruce things up, price it right, and get out the word, and things will go fine.

Just have some Patience . . .

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.