What makes a home sell?

This i a bit off topic, but still and interesting question...

What makes a house sell? I have been pondering this question, obviously since I am trying to sell my home. How do you get into the minds of the people that may be potential buyers? There are of course the standard things that the real estate agent tells you to do such as the de-cluttering, remove personal objects, make it clean and tidy, price, the signs, etc. But when you walk into a home what is it that makes one like or dislike this home?

I wish I could get into the minds of these buyers, but as a seller you get no exposure to the real people that visit your home when it is cleaner than it has ever been. They leave no trace, no scent, and no feedback. Maybe I should consider some hidden cameras? Maybe ask them to fill out a questionnaire before they leave – right!

My only method of understanding my potential buyers is by asking others within my network; what is it that made them buy the house they currently own? So this is it, my plea to all - please let me know who my buyer persona is?

Experimenting with the "New Rules of Marketing"

During the last few years I have been learning and experimenting with the concepts of "The new rules of marketing", David Meerman Scott (see his blog). I must say that it has been a great learning experience. The latest exploit is helping my Wife to promote the rental of her mother’s house. We found a semi free website that allow listing of rentals. We made sure that it ranked high in a relevant Google search. Then we created a Facebook group and thus we started to promote it through our online social network, which apart from FaceBook also included Twitter, LinkedIn, and this blog of course. It is really kind of an experiment but I really love to see how it unfolds. My Wife is ecstatic about how quickly you can reach out to people for help in promoting it.  She is constantly on Facebook looking at how many people joined the group. Yes I know that is not directly equal to somebody actually renting it but it still has a certain buzz to it. 

I have been doing similarly in building my personal brand and also marketing the sub division that I live in. We have created a blog that is used to exchange and share information with our members, a Twitter profile to send updates and information around, a Facebook group, and a Google profile. I must say that it has taken much longer than I expected to gain momentum. However I have been receiving very positive feedback about how well this works and more, and more of our members are starting to use all these different resources. Of course there is the added value of promoting our neighborhood allowing people that may be interested in a home purchase to get a peek at our community and the people who live there – hopefully this will also help our real estate value.