Amenities, HOA structure, school districts, and location all pull different buyers. Here's how we build a marketing plan around the right one.
If you've lived in your home for 20 or 30 years, you probably found it in a completely different way than people are buying and selling homes now. So when Dan Karp and I start working with a seller, one of the first things they're curious about is how we're going to find the right buyer for them. It's a question we get asked frequently, and the answer starts somewhere most people don't expect: with the community itself.
What draws a buyer to the community? One of the biggest factors in any sale is what makes a particular community appealing enough to pull someone in. It might be the amenities, whether that's pickleball, golf, or a great fitness center. It might be very low homeowner association fees.
Different reasons draw different buyers to see a property, so it's important for us to understand what attracted the current homeowner in the first place, because that's how we find an even better next homeowner for the home.
Communities change over 20 years. Things may have shifted since you bought, and the community has probably evolved along the way. Sometimes that's new amenities, sometimes it's different people moving in, and sometimes it's a complete shift in character. We're not marketing the community you moved into two decades ago, we're marketing the one that exists today, and being clear-eyed about that difference is what keeps the targeting accurate.
“Different reasons draw different buyers to see a property.”
Buyers weigh very different things. Dan puts it well when he looks at it from the buyer's side. People coming from out of state, out of town, or even from within our current market all face the same question: how do you pick the right community? For some, it's low HOA fees, or no HOA at all, because they don't want restrictions on what color they can paint the house or what kind of fence they can put up, and the restrictive nature of an association is a dealbreaker.
For others, it's finding the right school district, and price is obviously a factor for most people. Then there's location: is it too far from where I want to be, is it central, west, east? What attracts a buyer to a community varies from buyer to buyer, and each of those preferences points toward a different person walking through your front door.
Knowing the target shapes the plan. How we market your home to our buyers depends entirely on knowing who we're targeting before we put the marketing plan together. That's where the groundwork pays off.
There's one more thing worth saying, and it takes some of the pressure off. Even if the buyer who purchases your home finds it isn't 100% of what they were looking for, they aren't locked in forever. They can sell it and buy something else, and that's a beautiful thing about this market. We still do the best we can to make sure the match is good from the beginning, though, because a buyer who genuinely wants what your community offers is the buyer who follows through.
If you're thinking about selling and want to talk through who the right buyer for your home actually is, call or text us at 561-843-4464, email us at laurie@activeluxury.com, or visit tkgmarketexperts.com. We look forward to answering your questions and helping you plan your next move.
