PETALUMA CALIFORNIA - PETALUMA Homes and Real Estate For Sale

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If you're like most people, when you get the notion to start house-hunting, you go directly to the ads in newspapers, magazines, and real estate websites. Eventually you'll call a Realtor to help with the search, but at the beginning you're just curious, and it's easy to browse through the information on your own. And isn't it easy to find properties that sound great? Usually an ad will tell you barely enough to pique your interest. But if you're interested, you want more information. The ad says there are four bedrooms -- are they big enough? Where is this dream home? It looks wonderful in the photo, but what's next door? Is there a yard? The ad didn't say.

It should be no surprise that brokers invest in advertising to make the telephone ring. One of the basic rules of real estate advertising is to provide a limited amount of information so that an interested party must call to learn more. When you see an exceptionally long ad that seems to include every detail about a property, it's probably because the owner got involved in the process. While the owner believes that listing every feature will attract more interest, brokers understand that too much information also gives the reader more opportunities to eliminate the property from consideration. However, if not one prospective buyer sees the ad, the owner always reads it. So some advertising is created to please the client, even though it may not help the phone ring. Brokers know that the great majority of ad calls do not result in a purchase of the advertised property. They are opportunities for agents to make appointments with the callers and begin to build working relationships. You may experience some frustration if you call a real estate office wanting quick answers to questions about an ad. You want to know how many square feet are in the house, and the agent on the other end of the line wants to know when you will be available to meet with him. Choosing an agent to represent you eliminates that telephone tug-of-war. Your agent will be happy to get the information for you.

Do you sometimes feel like you need a special glossary to interpret real estate ads? When you finally see the property, does it match the description? Some people have come to suspect that 'quaint' and 'charming' are really synonyms for 'small.' Many of us were amused during the 1980's when it seemed that practically every property in Marin had a 'sylvan setting.' Apparently that meant more than one tree.

Of course we do our best to make the property sound wonderful in the ad without being misleading. But what if there really isn't anything wonderful about the property? One of my associates listed a lender-owned property that was miserable in every aspect, a real assault on the senses. Since her client was an institution with no emotional investment in the property, the agent tried an advertising experiment with the headline 'IT'S A DOG!' The copy was devoted to a description of the home's trashy appearance and awful odors. The ad produced a flood of inquiries, the most in the history of the office. The property had multiple offers and sold for well above its listed price. I guess truth in advertising isn't such a bad idea.