Hi Everyone,

How Much Advertising to Foreign Buyers Can Cost?

In the previous newsletter we have covered the basic costs of marketing your property for sale to foreign buyers - in case of commission sharing with a foreign realtor who sends you a foreign buyer (advertising expenses to find the buyer are not your responsibility which significantly lowers your initial spending).

Let’s take the same example of selling a property to a foreign buyer, but now without any help of a foreign realtor - advertising directly to foreign buyers on your own.

We assume the same scenario: property price $400k, your commission 6% equals $24k, marketing expenses 10% of the commission should be $2,400.

Now you have to make a decision: what percentage of the total allocated to marketing amount you want to reserve for local marketing and what for foreign. It depends on many factors in each particular case, but for the easiest way let’s consider 50:50 which comes to $1,200 for foreign advertising of your property for sale.

How do you want/need to spend your marketing money in the most efficient way - to find a foreign buyer in a reasonably short period of time?

As nowadays buyers come from the internet, we can look at online advertising in your target buyers country/language - real estate portals over there first of all.

Real estate portals usually charge for property listings/ads depending on the type of exposure (just a basic listing among many other similar ones, somehow highlighted listings which could be more visible to potential buyers, ads about your property on top of others, etc.) and time of exposure, too.

Obviously, more visibility would bring you a sale in a shorter time, right? And more visibility would cost more, of course. How to find the right balance? It’s beyond the scope of this example and requires careful consideration in each particular case based on supply vs demand, property price vs competition, etc.

For simplicity let’s say you are choosing a rather popular international real estate portal for advertising for 3 to 6 months which allows you to pay from $400 to $200 a month.

What kind of exposure of your property for sale to foreign buyers can this amount buy?

Talking about Russian portals it can place your property on a rather decent spot in terms of visibility, not the top one though (those usually go for thousands, not hundreds of dollars). Each portal has its own price list, and knowing the portal’s traffic you can evaluate the number of potential foreign buyers eyeing your property monthly.

Need help with researching your property for sale advertising options in Russian? And help with culturally adjusted translating for the best results of your advertising? I am only an email away.

To your best business success,

Sincerely,