Dear Relocating Family,

They say the third most stressfull thing you can do in life is sell and buy a home, especially if that sale and purchase involves moving out of state.

Because I have worked with a lot of families relocating to Colorado I have learned a lot of their major concerns.  Beside the normal criteria that a family is concerned about like Location, Schools, Price etc. There are other issues that cause them to rely on other people for good sound information.

The biggest problem that I face when a family is moving here from another state is timing.  Usually, they have only a couple of days here to find a home.  With hundreds of homes to choose from there is no way to see them all in a couple of days.  It is very important that I get a good feel for exactly what the families needs and desires are, along with what they absolutely do not want or like.   I try to send a lot of pictures of the properties over the first two or three weeks prior to the family coming out to look at properties. The problem with that is that a lot of realtors do not attach a lot of photos or virtual tours to their properties.  As you well know and every other family that I talk to about this, say the same thing.  They go online to see photos of properties and at least half have no photos at all or only 1 exterior photo.  This is no help to people that are relocating.  It makes things very hard for the family and for me as a realtor to send enough information on the properties that are available so that a decision can be made as to see or not see a particular property.

The reason that half the realtors that list properties for sale do not put photos on their listings is Marketing Ignorance. Most of them are from the old school.  put a sign in the yard and put the property in the MLS and they have done their job.  In this new world of technology that is just not exceptable.

Imagine if the people selling their home knew that you as a buyer did not even look at their home online because their were no photos.  That one thing stopped the sale of their home and they do not even know it and either does their realtor.

Things are slowly changing but it  will be a while before every home on the market has 50-100 photos and tours attached to Realtor.com so that people can find their home on the web.

So for now I make it a point to take photos of all the listings that meet the criteria of the family that I am working with and send it to them before they come out to Colorado.  This way we can save a lot of time looking at homes that you are not interested in and focus in on the homes you like. This saves your time and mine.