Home owners thinking of selling often times will list their home with the Realtor who does the most advertising. Sellers want to see their property advertised in newspaper, real estate books or on the internet. There is a misconception by the public that advertising will sell your home.

We Realtors are usually happy to take your listing and advertise your property. But not for the reason you would suspect. Most of the advertising we do helps us find buyers and sellers to work with.

The main purpose of advertising is not to directly sell your home. If you have been selling homes for a long period of time you know that a small percentage of people buy the home they originally called on.

Let's say I am advertising my clients home which is a 3 bedrooms, 2 bath golf course home for $450,000. I will take calls from prospective buyers who ask me about the home. I will give them the details of the home and hopefully they will buy it. However, this does not happen often and history shows that people rarely buy the home they originally called on. So at this point I try to tell them about other homes that may fit their needs. If they decide to work with me I will then hopefully sell them another home that I have found through the multiple listing service (MLS) or some other means.

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Now, let's say another Realtor is advertising his own listing which is similar to my $450,000, 3 bedroom, 2 bath golf course home for sale. He takes calls from his advertising efforts and does not sell his own listing. However, he has now found a buyer and goes to the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). The agent finds my listing, shows it and sells it. My sellers home has indirectly been sold by another agents advertising.

So, in essence, advertising creates phone calls and some of these callers become my clients. With enough advertising I can build up a pool of potential buyers. Now imagine all of the other agents and brokers in my market doing the same thing. This is the pool of buyers in the marketplace that are represented by a Realtor. The agents get together and match up their clients with the available homes for sale usually via the MLS system. That is how your home gets sold.

Marc Rasmussen is a Realtor in Sarasota, Florida.