Marketing Luxury Homes in the Age of the Internet

For real estate professionals, advertising luxury homes requires different strategies than selling more typical homes and properties. When trying to sell a half-million dollar home, an ad in the local Sunday newspaper is not the most effective approach to take.

How to Distinguish a Luxury Home

The luxury home market is usually defined, depending on the local market, as the top 10% of homes listed by asking price or homes listed above $500,000. Something that makes luxury home sales different from others is that each property often requires its own marketing plan. Another difference is that the buyer is more likely to be from out-of-town or state, often more than 500 miles from the location of the property.

Traditional Marketing for Luxury Property

Placing ads in newspapers, local real estate guides, and running open houses is not the most practical approach to reach potential buyers of these homes. These tried and true techniques of selling homes often do not reach people genuinely interested in purchasing high-end luxury properties. Rather, they often attract people who are described as interior decorating tourists or just those curious about what's inside these stunning homes.

List a Luxury Property Easily

In addition to multiple listing services (MLS), the Internet is also home to a variety of sites offering other ways of listing real estate for sale. There are listing sites that sell nearly everything imaginable and others that are exclusive to homes and property.

With the ability to include detailed description of a luxury home and its amenities as well as photos and, sometimes, virtual tours or at least a link to drive traffic to an external site for more information, these sites are very economical to a real estate agent's advertising and marketing budget. Some offer free listings or charge a nominal fee while others charge more for deluxe features.

Websites Where Luxury Property Can be Listed

Craigslist(dot)org is one example. Anyone can list almost anything, including real estate, largely for free. Craigslist(dot)org is a collection of some 30 million online classified ads in 450 markets in all 50 US states, and over 50 countries. With billions of page views each month, craigslist(dot)org is one of the most visited English language sites.

There are sites that are more specific to buying and selling real estate. One example is houselist(dot)com. This site has different levels of listing from free to several hundred dollars annually. Each level includes more selling features for an unlimited number of listings. Like craigslist(dot)org, houselist(dot)com is searchable by state and city or by country.

Another option is to use an auction site. eBay is probably the best known of these online companies. Listing expenses are generally linked to the value of the item for sale. There are nominal insertion fees for posting the item on the site. When the item is sold, additional fees are applied amounting to a percentage of the value of the sale.

When developing a marketing campaign for a luxury property, consider listing it online. The Internet is an ever-growing and changing wealth of advertising and networking opportunities that should not be overlooked. It is the latest twist on the "six degrees of separation" that many real estate agents and brokers rely on, especially when selling high-end luxury properties.