Real Estate-Education Center

Tip #20 in our series of 70 ways to save money when buying a house is to buy a new home from a builders inventory.

An inventory home is a brand new home built by the builder but without an owner. Either the person who wanted the house built backed out of the contract or the builder built it as a way to keep his staff working, or a model, or a way to add built homes to the neighborhood.

Whatever the reason of the inventory home, it can be a bargain for you. Builders hate having empty houses sitting around. They try to build as fast as possible and move to the next area. If a home is already built and sitting empty it is called an inventory home.

Builders often have specials on these homes. They offer great deals to get the home sold. But most do not offer the deals to people without Realtors representing them. So check to see if a Builder you like has any inventory homes and get your realtor to negotiate for you.

Builders get loans to build houses. The longer a home is sitting there empty, the more payments and interest the builder has to pay on that house. So the builder wants to unload it, quickly. And to do this, the builder will reduce it several thousand dollars. It will cost much less than having the builder build you the same model from scratch.

The only drawback is that the appliances will already be installed and you will not get to pick the model or lot. But if you happen to like an inventory home, there is no difference between it and any other home the builder builds. In fact, if it was an inventory home, you know that everything in the house works, and it will have the best of the best upgrades.

If there is anything you do not like about the home, you can ask the builder to replace it or change it at no cost. For example, my wife and I went to look at a condo complex recently. They only had one left. And it had wood floors. I prefer carpet, so the builder was more than willing to take out the wood and put in top of the line carpet, at not cost. The condo also had the best appliances as well. If we had bought this same condo earlier and chosen the top of the line carpet and the same appliances we would have paid thousands in upgrade charges.

Buying an inventory home or condo is a great deal. You get to see what the house will look like when you move in, the builder is desperate to sell it, and you get a brand new house or condo for less than what your neighbors paid. That is instant equity!

If you are looking to buy a new house or condo from a builder, an inventory home is a great way to save you several thousand dollars. And you can have an agent represent you and save thousands on the commission like I discussed in Tip #1. You get the best of both worlds: you save several thousands of dollars and get a brand new house.

Ask a person trying to sell their home how they distinguish themselves from the millions of other homes listed. Chance are you’ll hear:

* We painted the exterior.

* We planted new flowers.

* We keep it sparkling clean 24/7.

These are all worthwhile. But they don’t address the root of the problem.

Your home has to get discovered before any prospective buyer purposefully comes to view it.

You can advertise in the paper…and pay a lot of money for very little space. You can list your home with a Realtor…and compete against thousands of others.

Or, you can do like the family from North Texas, and put up your sign on the www: “For Sale By Owner”.

The family created a frenzy that drove crowds of hungry buyers to their private home sale. Here are the Internet Marketing Secrets they used to generate a huge “Buzz” for their sale.

Step 1: Assess the situation – Before beginning your sale preparation, it’s important to visualize the result and strategize how you will achieve it. Know your market. Get a Competitive Market Analysis and know what other homes are listed for sale and what prices comparable homes recently sold for.

Are your expectations reasonable? You can’t dictate fair market value. The process of attracting a large group of prospective buyers will help you get reasonable offers. But eventually the law of supply and demand takes over. The end result will probably be a sale of your home at a price that is not too high for the buyer, nor too low for you, the seller.

Step 2: Create a domain – There are loads of websites advertising hundreds of thousands of homes for sale. How do you expect yours to stand out?

Instead, of competing head-to-head, tilt the playing field to your advantage. Purchase your own domain at a site like Go Daddy. Come up with a clever name or simply use your address. One tip: try to keep it short so it’s easy to advertise.

Step 3: Set up a “squeeze page”. This is a very important step that is often glossed over. However, the impact of your “squeeze page” can greatly affect your ability to attract buyers to your home. The purpose of this page is to capture contact information, especially the email address, from each and every visitor to your website.

Why is this important? Because doing so “opts in” the visitor to your follow up system. From here on out, the visitors will receive information and enticements to make them want to come to your sale and buy your home!

An effective “squeeze page” contains certain elements.

Begin with an attention grabbing headline that makes readers want to learn more. For instance, “You’ve Never Seen A Home Sale Like This!”

Next give the readers just enough information to make them want to learn more. REMEMBER: the goal of this page is to persuade the visitor to trade their email address in exchange for more information about your sale.

Resist the temptation to describe every aspect of your house. DO NOT show dozens of pictures of every room (one photo of the front of your home should do fine.) There’ll be plenty of time and better places to show off all your home’s great charm and features!

Most importantly: Do not provide any other links on this page. Resist the urge to put Google Adwords on this page. The value of capturing an email address is infinitely greater than the penny you might earn by somebody clicking away from your page.

Finally, set up an email address capture form on the TOP RIGHT CORNER of the “squeeze page”. Most autoresponder companies, such as aWeber, give you the tools to do this easily. Go ahead and sign up for an account. You will need it to send out the series of messages to the list of prospective buyers you will soon build!

Would you like to increase your home based business profits by 50% without increasing your marketing budget?

Direct sales opportunity, with the current economic and market situations as they are, is fast gaining ground and popularity as an alternative source of income.  Any direct sales consultant with a home business,  you know that marketing is a fundamental to building any successful direct sales home party business.  Where many a home party plans business owner stumble, struggle and fail is not knowing to whom they are marketing and how to market both online and offline!

You see the common urge in the mlm direct marketing industry is to try and crumb something down the throat of a would be customer.

When you get a potential customer, many will do an immediate sales pitch.  It is unfortunately premature and turns people off! A better method, that any direct sales marketing guru will tell you and a business best practice is the 2 step direct marketing.

Simply put, 2 step direct sales marketing is based on giving something away for free, or at low cost, with the purpose of getting something back in return.  Of course that something is a sale, but beyond that is the relationship.  The idea here is to start small and build.  You want to obliterate concerns before you sell them anything – this is what is termed as pre-selling.

Step 1: Give away something, time, free samples, free demos, a free report, free session of coaching or consulting. 

Step 2: Get their contact information and permission to market to them.  This is called dripping information.  No hard sells please.  In this phase you are building rapport and trust.  Why?  So that you can begin to exert your influence.  Ever heard of the phrase Jump!  How high?  Good, that is the power you will command if your engage in the 2 step process!

So here is the psychology behind it You get a visitor to your site or meet a potential customer/business builder.

What you want to do is get their
1.Attention
2.Permission
3.Interact
4.Trust
5.Influence

You want to craft an irresistible offer, to raise the fever pitch if you will..  In doing so you will get their attention and in effect raise anticipation.
If you place and ad in a paper, mail out a postcard or have a website, the best way to get attention is an irresistible headline.  For example

How To Have “Killer” Sex
At Any Age… Even If
You Don’t Deserve It!

I have a feeling that got your attention and you are headed to google search to figure out if the book exists.  At the time of this writing, I have not yet ascertained the validity nor the existence of the book.

Your attention getting message must be compelling create a compelling giving just enough information about the product to get the prospect to take some sort of action. Invoke curiosity….

Direct Sales Training Tip : Use the useful but incomplete rule…don’t give it all always.  You now what they say, why buy the cow if you can milk it for free?

2. Call to action: There is no point in crafting an irresistible offer only to drop the ball.  People like sheep, must be led every step of the way.

A call  to action is the desired action you would like the potential prospect, client or customer to make.  For example Click Here To Order.  Limitted Time Offer.  While Supplies Last.  Get Your Free Copy Today!

The purpose of the call to action is an exchange of information.  You are capitalizing on their desire to get their hands on what you have in return for their name, phone number, email address and where possible a physical mailing address!  This is called getting people to raise their hand for information.  This is the essence of <a rel=”nofollow” onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outgoing/article_exit_link’);” href=”http://www.sethgodin.com/permission/”>permission marketing</a>, a term that is associated with Seth Godin, Marketing Demi-god!

Those who raise their hands for information become very hot direct sales leads. These are great business opportunity prospects and an excellent way to build a list.

As every direct sales representative or home party consultant knows, the “fortune is in the follow-up!”  Once the information exchange that was initiated by you is done and you have provided them with the requested information don’t stop there. Now you get into the direct sales marketing relational capital area of things!  You all know of the dismal statistics

“95% OF PEOPLE FAIL WHEN THEY START A BUSINESS WITHOUT A SYSTEM.

95% PERCENT OF PEOPLE ARE SUCCESSFUL WHEN THEY START A BUSINESS WITH A SYSTEM! “
-    Entrepreneur Magazine

This is a direct result of lack of follow up and follow through! 
Contrary to popular opinion, the money is not in the list. If you haven’t heard this before “the money is in the follow-up” so continually follow up. Once you have permission to market to people set up an email marketing campaign! If you don’t have an autoresponder, get one, this is the easiest way to follow up. Send them an email as often as necessary to create a relationship and remind them of your backend product. Don’t just do hard selling here.  I am a strong proponent of direct mail efforts with a combination of email marketing!

2 step direct – marketing  method is a time tested marketing method and will produce targeted prospects for your home based business.  The idea here is work smarter not harder!

If you house has been on the market for sale for the last day or the last year, chances are that you are just as excruciatingly anxious for it to finally sell. To make things easier for you, there are ten tips that you can follow to make your home sell faster. Let’s take a look at them.

Most potential buyers will do what we call a drive by, before actually asking to see the house. They will ride by the house to see what it looks like, and to see what the neighborhood is like. This is the first impression the buyer gets of your house, and you want it to be a good one. So, clean the siding, give the house a new coat of paint, add some bushes or potted flowers and keep your grass trimmed. This is called curb appeal.

Now that you have the owner’s attention, you must concentrate on the inside. Complete any unfinished projects, as well as, make any repairs, which are necessary. The buyer will be more interested if they don’t have to do any work before moving in. As part of this step, give the walls a fresh coat of neutral paint. You may be a fan of bright colors, but a neutral color will match anything the owner has.

It is very important to clean the house thoroughly. No buyer is going to get a good feeling if they find a cobweb on the ceiling or dust in the corners. They will associate dirt with the house. This is not the impression you want to give.

Along the lines of cleaning, exterminate your house. If you have a bug problem, you don’t want the buyer to see this. Go to your home improvement store and pick up some items to eliminate the bugs, or hire an exterminator. No one wants to cohabitate with ants or spiders.

If your carpets are old, shampoo them. If they are worn, remove them. Wood floors will be more appealing than stained, beat up carpets. You want your floor to appealing also.

Next, remove all clutter. Clutter has a way of making a space look small and non-appealing. People will think the house has no storage space if everything is piled around.

You want the buyers to be able to picture themselves in this house, so remove all pictures of you and your family. This will be distracting to them, and they won’t be able to look at it as their home. In addition, pack up any personal mementos and items. Also, take the pets to a friend’s house.

Next, lighten things up. Pull back curtains and drapes and let the natural light in. Add extra lamps or use the highest watt bulbs allowed in existing ones. You want the house to be warm and inviting, not dark and dingy.

Pay particular attention to the kitchen and baths, because the buyer will. Make sure they are spotless and well lit. White is an ideal color for the walls, because it will look clean. If you don’t have the money to do big renovations, you can add new lighting or change hardware. In the bathroom, add a new shower curtain and plush towels. These are two rooms that are important to buyers today.

Keep furniture in the house, if you can. It will be hard for the buyer to picture what the house will look like furnished, if it’s empty. Also, an empty house will look cold and uninviting. You want to give the owner a warm, welcoming feeling.

You can’t make someone buy your house, but you can make it appealing. By following the suggestions listed, you can make your house more marketable. If people are drawn to your house, they will want to buy it.

When it comes to achieving fast house sales, sitting around thinking “I’ll never sell my house” is not going to get you anywhere. Instead consider the following three options, any one of which could be the key to your fast house sales dilemma:

Option 1 – Estate Agents

Think about what you want to achieve: To ensure I can sell house quickly in a tough market, I need to ensure it is priced as cheaply as possible to look attractive in the agent’s books. I need to give myself the best chance of a fast house sale; I’ll de-clutter, neutralise and make it easy for the agent to show to potential buyers- they will be far more likely to want to buy my home if they can envisage their life there.

Option 2 – Sell and rent back

This sort of equity release is not encouraged unless as a last resort because too many quick sell-to-rent-back companies advertising equity release services are not well capitalised enough to ensure they will continue paying the mortgage. In the short term home equity release may solve the problem; however in the long-run this could leave you facing eviction if the flat or house is repossessed. If you can’t afford to pay the mortgage, you probably can’t afford to pay the rent over the long-term either.

Option 3 –Property Investment or cash homebuyer companies

I need to sell my house quickly and I don’t have time to wait for an estate agent to find individual buyers to buy my home.  I’ll sell my house to a property investment company or London cash homebuyer like SecureASale.

SecureASale is uniquely positioned as a cash purchaser to enable you to achieve an urgent sale. SecureASale can normally exchange contracts in 48 hours and complete in under a week, putting an immediate stop to all those ‘sell my house’ worries.