By Brendan Leahy, Naked Real Estate®
I should say up front that I market myself too. I write these articles, I post on social media, and I have a commercial interest in you thinking well of me. So take what follows as an argument you should test against me as much as anyone else.
I was at a kitchen table for an appraisal not long ago when the owner asked me something I am hearing more and more.
“How many social media followers do you have?”
I showed her, then asked why it mattered to her. Another agent had been through and told her he had around seven thousand followers across Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
I understand why that sounds like something. Big following, big reach, more buyers, more competition, better price. That is the chain of reasoning and each link sounds sensible.
The problem is the first link.
A follower is only worth something if they could buy your home
Someone watching a property video in Sydney, London or Shanghai is not buying in Bedfordale, Roleystone, Kelmscott, Mount Nasura, Mount Richon or Seville Grove next weekend.
That is not an argument against social media. Used properly it is a genuinely useful part of a campaign, and paid targeting, retargeting and database marketing can put your home in front of exactly the right people.
It is an argument against treating an agent’s popularity as a selling strategy.
I would rather have three hundred local followers who live here, know the market and watch what sells, than ten thousand who have no connection to the home. The goal is not attention. It is enquiries, inspections, offers and competition between buyers.
Views do not pay the seller
A video can get twenty thousand views and still fail.
If those views produce no qualified enquiry, no private inspection, no buyer conversation and no offer, then the video helped the agent more than it helped the seller. It entertained the algorithm.
Sellers do not get paid in likes. They get paid at settlement.
So the question to put to any campaign is not how it performed as content. It is whether it created buyer competition for your property.
I am not against video. We were early to it.
We have been making property videos since 2013, back when most agents used video only on high-end homes. We made it standard because buyers look at video as closely as they look at photos.
Video shows what photos cannot: how a home flows, how rooms connect, how the land is used, the outlook, the access, the sheds, the feel of standing in the place. Floor plans do the same job from a different angle. Buyers want to understand how a home works before they give up a Saturday to inspect it.
And it does not need to be long. Most property videos should be a clear walkthrough that explains the home and makes the buyer want to see it, and past a few minutes you are usually not selling harder, you are asking more of the buyer’s attention than the job requires. Our videos from 2013 mostly ran between one and two minutes. That was deliberate then and it still holds.
Good photos, video and floor plans all serve one purpose. Selling the home.
Is the home the hero?
This is the simplest test there is. Watch the video and ask who it is about.
A good property video makes the right buyer understand the home and feel something about it. In the Hills that might be the usable land, the workshop access, the valley outlook, the quiet street, the fireplace, the privacy, the school run, the layout, or the specific reason a family would stretch to buy it.
There is room for personality and there is room to be creative. Some homes suit it. But the property should not become the backdrop to somebody’s personal brand.
Every one of our videos is captioned
This sounds like a small thing. It is not.
Plenty of buyers watch property videos with the sound off. At a desk at work having a quick look at what is open on the weekend. On the train home. On the couch with the television going. If your video only works with audio, those buyers get half of it.
It still surprises me how many agents skip this.
There is a second benefit. Search engines read captions, so an accurate caption file means the suburb, the street and the features of your home are indexed as text. Auto-generated captions are not good enough for that, because they routinely mishear street and suburb names, which are the exact words worth indexing.
It costs a bit of time per video. It costs the seller nothing, and it works whether the buyer has the sound on or not.
The numbers that actually matter
When you are choosing an agent, ask about the numbers connected to a result rather than to an audience.
How many enquiries did comparable properties attract? How many inspections, and how many second inspections? How many buyers were followed up, and how? How many offers were created? How was competition between them handled? How did the final price compare to the original guide? How many buyers missed out and are still looking?
I will be straight with you: those are the numbers I am strong on, so of course I am pointing you at them, just as the agent leading with follower count is
pointing you at his. The difference I would ask you to weigh is which set of numbers actually ends up in your bank account. Marketing creates attention. Follow-up creates competition. Negotiation creates the result. An agent who is strong at the first and weak at the other two will produce a busy campaign and a disappointing number.
Five questions worth asking
If an agent leads with their following, ask these:
- How many of your followers are plausibly in the buyer pool for a home like mine?
- Will my property be marketed only to your followers, or targeted beyond them?
- In your campaigns, what matters more: views, enquiries, inspections or offers?
- Can you show me how a recent campaign turned attention into buyer action?
- In the video, will my home be the hero, or will you be?
A good agent will not be offended by any of that. They should be able to answer all five without hesitating, and if they cannot, you have learned something useful for the price of asking.
Frequently asked questions
Do social media followers help sell a house?
Only the followers who could actually buy your home in your area. Reach for its own sake does not pay the seller; a video seen by thousands of people with no connection to your suburb creates no competition. Local, targeted reach and proper follow-up matter far more than a big follower count.
How do I choose a real estate agent in the Perth Hills?
Judge them on numbers connected to results, not to an audience: enquiries, inspections, second inspections, offers created, how buyer competition was handled, and how final prices compared to the original guide. An agent strong on attention but weak on follow-up and negotiation produces a busy campaign and a disappointing price.
Does video actually help sell property?
Yes, when it is about the home. Good video shows what photos cannot, how a home flows, the land, the outlook, the access, and helps a buyer decide the property is worth inspecting. Captions matter too, because a lot of buyers watch with the sound off. The test is simple: is the home the hero, or is the agent?
Is a longer property video better?
Usually not. Past a few minutes you are generally asking more of a buyer’s attention than the job needs, though some properties, large acreage in particular, genuinely need the extra time to show the land and the outbuildings properly. A clear walkthrough that makes the buyer want to see the home in person does more than a long video that performs well as content but produces no enquiry.
Selling in the Perth Hills or Foothills?
If you are selling in Bedfordale, Roleystone, Kelmscott, Mount Nasura, Mount Richon or Seville Grove, do not choose an agent on a follower count. Ask how they will reach the buyers who could actually buy your home, and what they will do once those buyers put their hands up.
That second part is where the money is.
Book a free Perth Hills and Foothills property appraisal. If you want to see how we handle buyer competition once interest appears, read Auction vs Private Treaty vs Select Date Sale® and our Best Service Guarantee.
Truth. Strategy. Sold.
About the author: Brendan Leahy has been selling homes throughout the Perth Hills and Foothills since 2002, with more than 1,500 personal sales. Learn more about Brendan Leahy and the Naked Real Estate story.