Blog.ByTheOwner.com

Since the launch of ByTheOwner.com’s New Homes website in March 2007 (newhomes.bytheowner.com), Ontario new home builders have taken advantage of this great new marketing tool! Many new home builders in Ontario, such as Valleyrauss Homes, Freure Homes, Mason Homes, Sunlight Heritage Homes, Sun Point Homes, Chris & Sons Builder’s Lmt, Fabbian Fine Homes, Stonecroft Homes, Townwood Homes, Tavon Homes, Bromberg Homes, Verdone Homes (2000), Hedburn Homes, Applewood Homes, Gregor Homes, and Sunfield Homes, have all marketed thier new and upcoming projects on ByTheOwner.com. Some new home listings have sold in less than 20 days!!!

These builders are taking advantage of the opportunity to showcase their new homes and projects to ByTheOwner.com’s 150,000 unique visitors per week. Each builder receives their own listing, their logo in each listing and a special builder’s page which describes more about the builder and allows visitors to access the builder’s specific website.

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ByTheOwner.com has recently studied the results of advertising in newspapers and magazines vs advertising online. The results indicate that internet advertising is more effective than using newspaper or magazine. One source studied was the Toronto Star. 20 different classified examples were studied and the conclusion was that placing a classified ad in the Toronto Star produced only a 5% increase in activity to the listing. Where an average listing on ByTheOwner.com would receive 200 online visits per week, a corresponding ad in the Toronto Star would increase this by 10 visits at a cost of $50-$200 for the classified ad. Another conclusive example is The Star’s new home website “Newinhomes.com”. This particular website is advertised in print with full and ½ page ads each Saturday in the “New in Homes” section of the newspaper. In spite of a circulation of 1.9 million, the “New in Homes” website received less than 32,000 unique visitors during the month of February (according to Comscore). This compares to more than 400,000 unique visitors for the internet based ByTheOwner.com/DuProprio.com in February. Similar results were found with the “New Homes and Condo Magazine”. This magazine can be found at thousands of stands, yet their website “newhomesandcondos” also received
less than 33,000 unique visitors during the month of February (According to Comscore). These results suggest that the consumers prefer to search online from the comfort of their homes vs actively obtaining the print information.

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ByTheOwner.com has had 8 homes sell privately in London during the first 2 weeks of April . The homes have sold in an average of 35 days (7 of the homes sold in less than 35 days!) and the owners who sold have sent us the following testimonials:

I had a great experience selling by owner. I was very surprised at how little work it was. The most work was having to keep our house clean, and we would have had to do that anyway! I was truly impressed with ByTheOwner.com. Their service was great, website excellent, and price very affordable. I will use their service every time I sell. -Scott

• Scott Thoutenhoofd
  London
  2007-04-16

Worked very well for us. We found the web site to be very user friendly and the statistics reports were helpful. The combination of advertising in our local newspaper and referring to our bytheowner link gave us the greatest exposure to serious buyers. Thank you for a great product.

• Rob Lim
  London
  2007-04-16

Thank you for your encouragement to sell privately. Your literature encouraged open houses and gave some tips regarding them. It was through an open house that the buyer first came to look at our home. Now it is sold! Thank you.

• Laurie Herbert
  London
  2007-04-16

We sold the house in 7 days! The website is great and customer support was very helpful. We are so happy. We saved thousands in commission fees and got the price we wanted. We’re very happy with the whole process!

• Sabina Graham
  London
  2007-04-10

http://www.bytheowner.com

Home staging is an important marketing technique for selling homes, whether they are furnished or empty.

As I have been receiving many questions lately regarding empty houses and how to sell them faster and for more money, this article will discuss the specifics of staging empty properties.

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