Marketing Your Neighborhood Along with Your Home

Sellers, does your neighborhood have a singular, sensational feature? Or many? Something that makes your home special because of the small square block area in which it sits? You've lived there awhile. Maybe you take this thing (or these things) that make your neighborhood special for granted.

Like the courtyard (left) with a public grill in a building where grills would otherwise be a codes violation...Where the grass is so plush it beckons a picnic:

When you're selling your home, you have to remind yourself - your potential buyers - your Realtor - of this these little (or big) things that make your neighborhood special.

Buyers are nervous. They are making a big change. They are leaving friends, sometimes family, to go to a new place. They are taking on financial risk in an uncertain real estate market. Something about the place they were has been motivated them to take this giant step into a new home - potentially to your current home. Give them a reason to feel comfortable in their new place. Give them some new experiences to look forward to in this new environment.

One of the exercises I go through with sellers when listing their home is to give them a disposable camera and leave them alone for a few hours with an assignment: Take pictures of the things that you love about your home and your neighborhood.

There are no rules. The pictures can be close up or panoramic, details or scenes. The pictures that come back give me a perspective on what makes that home or that neighborhood special - local restaurants, a favorite tree planted years ago, heirloom iris...

These pictures help us to create the marketing materials that put buyers at ease, like the Montague video.

Although the final product may not include the actual pictures - it does include the stories and sentiments that those pictures helped to convey - of a neighborhood steeped in tradition, secluded near the river, yet so convenient to the city. I'd live there. Wouldn't You?

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