Let Tent Signs and Captions Do Your Talking
Introverts as FSBOs
Photo by Annie Spratt
One thing I have noticed over the years, first-time FSBOs feel compelled to sell their home. They feel they must be a tour guide, whether a prospect has an appointment, or when there is an open house.
After all, there is probably no one who knows the house better than the person who is living there. But they fail to realize that some prospects feel added pressure when the seller is hovering around them
WHAT IS THE ANSWER?
Communication is the ANSWER. But not just any communication- non-invasive communication.
If you stand in front of somebody telling them about your house while poking your index finger on their lapel, you will probably just run them off.
Yes, they need to find out about your house, in order to love it, but that has to happen unobtrusively so as not to drive them away. I call that non-invasive communication. Let your house do the communicating. The house will sell itself to the right person.
Captions
In the various MLS systems they have spaces for 20 – 30 photographs, usually including the primary picture. Under each photo (except, maybe the primary) there is room for a caption. Captions look best as one or two conversationally styled sentences. Bullet-lists don’t look good in that format. They have sometimes as few as 250 spaces for letters or spaces. That amounts to a couple of complete sentences. After 250 letters the system drops the rest. Find out how much area you have first.
If you do captions, don’t mention the obvious – mention something that is not obvious, and not dealt with in the rest of the listing. You should also check the type listing that you have. Some very basic MLS entry-only listings do not allow captions under the photos.
Tent signs
Tent signs are nothing more than 3 x 5 index cards folded in half, so that they stand up like a pup tent. Since your house will be selling itself, you may need to let it explain some items that may not be readily apparent. For instance, you put all new cat 5 cable behind this wall, but it doesn’t show up in the picture or in person.
You should not have to give the tour of your house, but there are often things that need to be pointed out, and with tent signs this can be accomplished with ease. I have had Realtors tell me that they hate my tent signs because they take control of the prospects. People are looking for the next Easter egg, and concentrating on the house, rather than the agent, and that makes some agents feel unimportant.
The fact is that today in 2024, agents are not only beginning to accept tent signs, I saw last week a listing belonging to one of the mega-agencies that was sporting tent signs.
You might say that the tent signs may end up reading like the picture captions. Grab you a GoPro camera and do a walk-through. Slap the URL on the media page of your listing. The important thing is neither you nor the agent will be will sell your house. Your house will sell itself when the magic happens as the prospect looks at it. We need to simply let that happen.
One of the biggest parts of the job is non-invasive communication.
(This post may contain affiliate links, which means if you click, or make a purchase by clicking on them, I may receive a small commission, at no additional cost to you, that will help me continue to bring you valuable content. Thanks for your support!)