Want To Know A Secret?

Okay, here it is.......according to the 2007 National Association of Realtors (NAR) Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers survey, "84 % of home buyers use the internet to search for a home."

So what does that mean to you if you are interested in selling your home? Well, let's take a historical look at the real estate industry. We'll call this look BTW (Before The Web) and ATW (After The Web).

BTW, the primary benefit of listing your home with a REALTOR was that your home would be included on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) The MLS was a private electronic network the REALTORS created which allowed them to view all the homes that were listed by all the local REALTORS. No one other than REALTORS had access to this network, so the only way a buyer could easily access all the homes for sale in their area was to contact a REALTOR and get a list of the homes for sale. Of course that came with a price. The buyer would sign an exclusive buyer agreement with the REALTOR which would assure that the REALTOR was going to get half the commission on the sale of a home that was being offered for sale on the MLS by another REALTOR.

Because the MLS was the greatest source for homes for sale through a REALTOR, the best way to market the homes for sale was to put an ad in the local newspaper with a photo and a few details of the home for sale. The city, address or price of the home were rarely put in the ad, because the REALTOR placing the ad wanted to make sure that the prospective buyer would contact them when they saw the newspaper ad and that would give that REALTOR the greatest opportunity to sell that buyer a home and make a commission.

The problem is that newspaper ads are expensive! So because the REALTORS were having to pay for newspaper advertising for the homes they had listed for sale on the MLS, they had to charge what could be considered to be a large commission rate to sell the home. (sometimes as much as 10 percent of the selling price). By the way, before the web, no buyers were searching for a home online.

Okay, now let's talk about "after the web" (ATW) With the creation of the world wide web (www) consumers were capable of going "online" to shop for merchandise. It was a gradual progression to what things are like today because the process was slow and doing things like looking at photos of homes online was a very tedious process.

But now everything has changed! This is obvious by this year's survey results which show 84 percent of all home buyers are shopping online. What does this mean to prospective home buyers? It means buyers no longer have to look at newspaper ads for homes for sale. All the homes listed on the MLS are now listed online at an incredible number of websites. Probably the best known is REALTOR.COM. No longer do you have to only see one photo and a few details, you can see many photos and a huge amount of details online.

What does that mean to home sellers? In our opinion, it means that if a seller wants to list their home with a REALTOR, they shouldn't have to pay a high commission rate anymore because REALTORS don't need to pay for expensive newspaper ads with photos and details anymore. All that is needed is a simple little ad directing prospective buyers to their website where the buyer should be able to see all the photos and details they need before walking through a home with that REALTOR.

If you are interested in listing your home, please put your trust in GRAY REALTORS. We are a full service brokerage, we place our listings on the local MLS and the MLS of Northern Illinois, we advertise our website address in the newspapers every week and we offer the lowest commission rate in the area. GUARANTEED!

815-698-2888