1816 Spooner Drive — Sold for $1,640,000

I use professional real estate photography because the photographs are often a buyer’s first real introduction to a home.

For 1816 Spooner, I hired my favorite photographer for the primary photo shoot. But I also thought the backyard deserved something more.

The home had an outdoor BBQ kitchen, firepit and decorative outdoor lighting. Those features looked especially good around sunset, so I had the photographer come back for a separate twilight shoot.

That wasn’t something I did because every listing needs twilight photography. I did it because this home gave me a reason to use it.

That is how I think listing marketing should work. Use the tools that help buyers better see, understand and want the particular home being sold.

Still photographs are important, but they don’t always help a buyer understand how one room connects to another.

For Spooner, I created a Matterport 3D tour that allowed buyers to move through the house virtually and look around each room in 360 degrees.

A buyer across town — or across the country — could explore the home before ever scheduling a showing.

Matterport also gives buyers something photographs alone cannot: a much better feeling for the layout and flow of the property.

Buyers also want to understand the layout quickly.

For Spooner, I included traditional floor plans that buyers could simply look at or print.

I also included an interactive floor plan. A buyer could click an area of the floor plan and immediately see photographs taken from that part of the home.

The photos show the home. The floor plan explains how it all fits together.

A listing page on Zillow, Redfin or Realtor.com presents a home inside a standardized format. A dedicated property website gives me the opportunity to build the presentation around the home itself.

So I created one for 1816 Spooner.

For Spooner, I even scanned and included a PDF of the original builder’s brochure.

I also registered an easy-to-remember, easy-to-type custom domain:

1816Spooner.com

A beautiful listing does not matter much if the home is poorly priced, offers aren’t evaluated carefully or the transaction falls apart after the seller accepts one.

Pricing is not simply choosing a number from a list of comparable sales.

I look at recent sales, current competition, the individual strengths of the property and how buyers are likely to compare it with the other homes available to them.

Once offers arrive, price is only part of the decision.

Financing, contingencies, deposit, timing, possession and other terms can all affect which offer is actually strongest for the seller.

Getting the home into escrow begins a different phase of the sale.

My transaction coordinator, Tanya Knowles, owns an independent transaction coordination company. She is also a California real estate broker, and her team coordinates more than 1,000 real estate transactions a year. With contracts, disclosures and deadlines, that experience matters.

Tanya and her team help manage the disclosures, documents, signatures, deadlines and countless details involved in getting a transaction from accepted offer to closing.

I remain your broker and continue handling the real estate decisions, negotiations and issues that require my involvement. Tanya helps make sure the transaction itself stays organized and moving.

After closing, my sellers also receive a professionally prepared bound book containing their transaction records, along with a digital copy.