Just a Landlord

A buddy of mine is attempting to sell a couple of his Milwaukee  multi-families.   He listed it with a broker, but was frustrated when he did not receive any reasonable offers or much interest.  This despite the sale would have generated a $70,000 commission.

Years ago the two of us owned a small carpet store, primarily to get wholesale carpet for our properties, but we did some marketing for the store that turned out pretty well.  So we decided to try our hand at some self marketing of his property.

Short version: Basically for a few hundred dollars he got listed on the largest commercial listing site in the nation,  printed material was mailed to potential buyers and a website with pictures and a video walk through was put up (www.630Hawley.com)

So far it is making the phones ring, which is a good thing.  Please leave your opinions in the comments on what we could do better. Also if you are in the market for a couple of nice brick multi-units in a nice area of Milwaukee give Jeff a call (414) 379-7996

So what did we do to make the phone ring?

First step was listing the property on Loopnet.com.  This is the site for commercial properties.  I used it extensively when looking for a location to expand my wife’s business. LoopNet gets 2.7 million unique visitors a month. Prices to list run from free to around $90 a month depending on the extra marketing you may want.

We then created a website using the  property address as the URL: www.630Hawley.com  You can get a domain name for $10 through GoDaddy.com or 1and1.com and hosting for $5-$6 a month. There are a number free of tools you can use to make the pages, or you can use something like MS Word.  Or just skip this all and use a free platform like WordPress.com.

To promote the property and drive traffic site we sent some postcards  to a bunch of people who bought similar sized properties in the area in the past two and a half years.   You can get the postcards for $20-30 per 500 from places like VistaPrint.com, OvernightPrints.com or GotPrint.net. Here again you do not need anything special to do the cards.  Just download a template from your printer of choice and have a go at it with Word. With postage you’re spending under  $200 for a 500 piece mailing.

For a few dollars a day you can use pay per click ads from places like  Google Adwords,  Microsoft AdCenter or some of the smaller vendors to drive targeted traffic to the site.  While Adwords is a large topic, a couple of quick tips are:  Geo target your ad campaign to reach only those that may be in the market for your property.  Next choose keywords that you feel you would search for is you were looking for a property like the one you are trying to sell.

Other steps that we have not tried for this property, but I used to market a West Allis commercial property that similarly frustrated me when listing it with a broker did not generate results was to have a sign shop make some large banners or signs on Coroplast  I paid $44 each for 3′ x4′ signs and $65 for 4′ x 6′ banners at Quick Signs in West Allis.

On that property the signs and LoopNet listing resulted in a dozen serious inquires in a little over a month and three solid offers.

So I’m interested in hearing your ideas.