Life in Big Canoe, Real Estate in the Mountains

We had a listing meeting today with some clients in the Big Canoe Community.  Our conversation for a listing meeting was fairly typical in that the sellers wanted to know about our marketing (particularly internet marketing in Big Canoe) as well as new suggestions on how to get their home sold.  Something they were not aware of was IBA Mountain Home’s variable rate commission structure.  To the best of my knowledge, this is something that nobody else in Big Canoe is doing.  It works this way:

• For residential home listings, we charge a maximum of 5%. 
• In the event another broker provides a Buyer, the total commission is 5% with 3.5% going to the Selling Broker (the Broker that provided the Buyer) and IBA Mountain Homes keeps 1.5%.
• We also encourage the Seller of the home to market their home.  In the event the Seller provides a Buyer, IBA Mountain Homes handles all the paperwork and negotiations, and the total real estate commission is reduced to 2%.

IBA Mountain Home’s variable rate commission structure has stayed pretty much the same since our inception, and homeowners in Big Canoe have saved thousands of dollars by listing with us.  IBA Mountain Homes is a full service broker affiliated with Coldwell-Banker Mountain Aire Realty, and our real estate marketing is a little different than our competitors. So how does IBA advertise?

• We run two separate ads in our local Big Canoe newspaper, the Smoke Signals.  One ad is a full color, full page ad for our residential listings.  The other ad is for our residential lot listings in Big Canoe.  We also use conventional print ads in other newspapers.
• We advertise heavily on both Google and Yahoo.  While our natural rankings for both of these search engines is high for key search words, we also pay for additional advertising – something that most of our competitors are not willing to do.  Most Buyers investigating a real estate purchase begin their search on the internet, and roughly 90% of them use Google for their searching, roughly 10% use Yahoo.
• We advertise in select businesses where customers have time to sit and read over a real estate flyer.  A good example of this would be Sunshine Car Wash of Dunwoody which is a full service car wash in North Atlanta.  We stock the lobby of this car wash with flyers and informational  pieces for the customers to read while their cars are being cleaned.
• We try to make our web site easy to use. There never has been and never will be any registration required to access our listings.  IBA wants our site visitors to have an enjoyable and easy going experience on our site. 
• We also try to provide our clients with up to date resale statistics for the Big Canoe real estate market.

If you have any questions about our variable rate commission structure or our advertising, please do not hesitate to contact us.  We always try to answer the phone!  You can reach Karin Elliott at (770)655-4303 or you can email us at kelliottiba@tds.net.  You can see all of IBA Mountain Home’s Big Canoe real estate listings here!