What Happens After You
List Your Home with The Birdsong Team

1. Immediately: The listing agreement is returned to our office where it is entered into the Brazoria County Multiple Listing Service computer system. Conceivably, you could start getting calls as soon as your home is entered into the computer system. All real estate offices in the area will know of the availability of your home as soon as it is in the computer. In addition a color brochure is prepared on your home and a black and white brochure is faxed immediately to the top real estate companies to give your home immediate exposure to the market place.

2. Soon After: Either I or one of my team-members will return to your home with a lockbox, which is placed on nearly all homes on the market. A sign will be placed at the home which has several unique features that benefit the seller. The sign is state of the art and glows in the dark when light hits it. The sign has a brochure box, which contains a black and white feature sheet about your home and on the back of the feature sheet are all of the homes listed by the Birdsong Team. These are listed by address, price, and hotline code. Therefore your home is being advertised at every home listed by the Birdsong Team. On the top of the sign is a sign rider publicizing THE BIRDSONG REAL ESTATE HOTLINE, (979) 299-6100, which notes the hotline phone number and code for your home. When the prospective buyer calls the hotline and enters the code for your home the hotline will give a voice description of your home, provide a faxed flyer to the caller if they have access to a fax machine, route calls back to the office, or the opportunity to leave a message for an agent. In addition the hot line will record the date and time of the call, the name and address of the caller, and the homes that were inquired on and which information was requested. The sign also has the Birdsong Real Estate office number, (979) 297-4200, which is answered by office staff or a professional answering service 24 hours a day. Furthermore on the bottom of the sign is Ed's personal name rider with a picture and Ed's personal phone number, (979) 299-4006 which is answered by Ed or sent to his message center, which pages Ed to notify him that a message is waiting in his message center.

The color brochure is delivered to the home in a plastic display stand so prospective buyers may pick one up while viewing the property. The home is also placed on the Oyster Creek Billboard with price and address on a rotating basis and a color picture with address and price is placed in our window display, so patrons of the restaurant next door may view them with ease. Direct mail target marketing just listed cards are mailed to the neighborhood and targeted prospective buyers, color picture postcards are sent to the nearest neighbors and top Realtors in the Multiple Listing System asking if they know a prospective buyer for the home.

A Realtor Open House will be scheduled to expose your home to Realtors, refreshments will be served and a written survey will be taken of the Realtors in attendance to determine their views of pricing, condition, comparison to other homes and take suggestions to help market the home. The surveys will be left for the seller to review.

The home will also be placed on the World Wide Web at http://www.birdsong-real-estate.com with a color picture, giving the home exposure to over 152 million households. In addition, the home will be advertise on Realtor.com, the largest web site in the United States listing homes for sale. The site is sponsored by the National Association of Realtors. The home will also be advertised in The Facts in our Sunday ad and our market watch, which is published quarterly.

3. Showings: Showing your home is relatively simple. If a member of the Birdsong Team wants to show your home, they will call you directly, giving you a time span when they anticipate they will be at your home. If an agent from another company wants to show your property, appointments will be made through the Birdsong Real Estate office. If you are not home agents are instructed to follow the showing instructions agreed upon at the time of listing.

Remember, when agents are showing a number of homes, the time frames may be slightly off. Occasionally, an agent will make an appointment and then not show up. If this happens please call the office so a member of the Birdsong Team can call the agent and find out what happened that made an agent miss their appointment. Please feel free to call if you have any questions on any of these procedures.

4. Follow up: When your home has been shown a member of the Birdsong Team will call the agent as quickly as possible to get "feedback" from the showing agent and their clients. These callbacks will give us information on pricing, condition, etc., so we can see if there is something we can do to make the property more marketable. Obviously, if the agent's clients are really interested in the home, we'll probably get a call from the agent right away. If after several attempts we do not get feedback from the agent we can assume that their clients were not interested in the home.

In addition, you will receive a computer generated Listing Service Report each 30 days on the market. This report will detail all tasks performed by the Birdsong Team to give your home maximum exposure to the market place, it will also show all showings and advertising on the property. Three multiple listing reports will be a part of the report including Current Active Listings in the price range to determine the current competition, Pending Sales in the last 30 days to determine the activity of the market and Sold to see what which homes have actually sold. An overview will be written in the service report detailing any shift in market conditions.

5. Things you don't see: Lots of things you don't see are being done daily to sell your home. For instance, I have computerized lists of top agents from all the real estate companies in the Lake Jackson area and we might give them a call to see if they are working with buyers who might be interested. We also fax a brochure about your home to the top 12 real estate companies in Lake Jackson. So you see we are constantly recommending your home to agents who we know are working with buyers looking in your price range.

6. Remember to be patient: It has been taking longer to sell even "perfect" homes in the Lake Jackson area marketplace. One of the reasons for this is the Dow layoff, which is scaring many would-be buyers off. However, interest rates are at a four year low rate of around 7% and this is currently stimulating the market. It is hard to be patient but, like watching the proverbial pot and waiting for it to boil, it WILL sell. That's why you hired me -- a seasoned professional -- to market your home.