Real estate brochures are a necessity for marketing your home for sale.

Over the last couple of days we loooked at a Formula for Selling your Pasadena Home in 30 days or less. It all comes down to getting your home ready for sale, pricing your Pasadena home correctly and marketing exposure.

In my second post in the Selling Your Home series, we reviewed how best to showcase your home listing in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and the use of Flash Presentations or Home Tours.

Today, I wanted to take a look at how to create an effective Property Brochure for Pasadena home buyers. This is especially helpful for our For Sale By Owner Sellers.

What is the purpose of a home property flyer or a brochure?

The main purpose of a home brochure is to ensure that home buyers will easily remember your home and be able to contact the home seller (if you are selling your home by owner) or the real estate agent representing your home.

Other reasons that home buyers pick up a brochure is to:

1. Share information about the home with their friends and family.
2. Easily access important data about the home – home sales price, square footage, HOA (if any), year home built, special features, etc.
3. Compare your home with other homes that they have seen around Pasadena.

Choosing a property brochure design layout:

1. Should this be a one page or a two page brochure? I always recommend using both sides of your brochure. Why waste the back of the brochure and leave it blank? It’s just like thinking of a real estate location – 1st page of the brochure is your prime real estate and the back is secondary real estate location. I prefer to have a stunning picture on the first page with home address and price. The second page on my brochures will usually have more beautiful photographs and specific details about the home for sale.
2. Color and Design of the Border of the brochure. Using too many colors will actually take away from the brochure. One or Two colors will add to a more striking presentation.
3. Decide on text font and size. Remember to have lots of white space for easy reading and headers as appropriate.

Describe your home:

1. The first thing I recommend doing is going through your house room by room. Make notes about what is special about each room. What are your home’s highlights? Think about how you entertain. What do your friends and family like about this house?
2. Have a concise leading paragraph and follow up with bullet points of special items and amenities.
3. Be as clear as possible. The very last thing you’d want to do is mislead a potential customer. Do not over-enhance the home’s features. Stay factual.

READ MORE: Power Words that SELL

Add Photographs:

1. Decide on the number of photographs that you will use. I usually prefer to use 5 to 6 photos highlighting some of the rooms, the front of the house and the backyard.
2. Make sure the photos are in order of how a buyer would view your home. It will make it easier for the potential buyer to remember what it was like walking through your home.

Contact Information:

1. Remember to put your name, phone number and email address so that potential buyers can get a hold of you quickly.

Printing Property Brochures

1. Good quality paper is an important part of the presentation. Make sure that you select a good heavy stock paper.
2. Always print in color. Please, no black & white copies. These are just a huge NO NO!
3. There are plenty of printers that would be happy to print off 100 to 200 copies for you. The average charge is about $75 for 100 flyers. Have plenty on hand for the buyers and the potential agents that might stop by.

Distribution

1. Keep the home sale brochures available at the entry of the home presented in a nice stand. Dining room table or kitchen bar works nicely as well.
2. I am not a huge advocate of having brochures in front of your home in a brochure holder. The idea here is to have buyers visit and view your home, not just pick up a brochure. If you do choose to have some outside, make sure the brochures are of the highest quality so as not to discourage potential buyers.
3. Distribute property brochures to local real estate offices. Remember that even if you choose to sell your house by yourself, in all likelihood a real estate agent will end up selling it for you. Get the local real estate community involved by letting them know that your home is for sale. Most buyers will be represented by a professional real estate agent.

Okay, you are ready to start working on your property brochure. Don’t forget to check your spelling!