When houses are being sold within hours of being offered for sale, it’s amazing how swiftly we forget how important marketing skills and techniques are to making money in real estate. Being able to market creatively is going to be critical to success and financial survival.

There’s no real trick to marketing; all you’ve got to do is to have a product that buyers want and are ready, willing, and able to pay for. The foregoing sentence is loaded with traps:

(1) You’ve got to have a product.
(2) Buyers have to want it more than comparable items on the market.
(3) They’ve got to be ready to act.
(4) Willing.
(5) Able to pay. Let’s bring this down to the level of a single-family house:

If a house is going to be your product, what kind of house? Statistics tell us that most American homeowners live in detached three bedroom single family houses. That boils down to about 40 million families. They’re your market. They prefer at least two bathrooms and two car garage, but will settle for less if necessary to meet their financial means and other needs. They’ll pay more for clean, attractive houses in safe, convenient neighborhoods and good school districts. They usually want to buy what they see, and not a job to do once they move in. That is a prescription for the product that will sell fast, but there are three additional factors that influence whether buyers buy:

Home buyers must be willing to give up their present quarters to reside in those being offered for sale; so a seller needs a “hook”. For men, the hook is often easy payments or extras pertaining to a hobby such as space for a workshop, golf cart, RV or boat. For women, it is convenience to shopping, schools, and amenities; and the overall utility of the floor plan and kitchen. We know that women make the vast majority of house-buying decisions, so our first task, if we can afford it, is to build in a terrific kitchen with lots of cabinets, sexy appliances, and pizazz such as tile or granite counter tops. We’ll supplement these with easy maintenance ceramic or wood laminate floors and a split bedroom floor plan.

Given, we can motivate people to buy our house, but what’s the hook we need to make them ready to make their move. We might offer a today-only discount, or be willing to pay all closing costs to motivate them to buy NOW. Go to any tapesale seminar and notice how many times buyers are spurred to buy with “at the seminar only” prices. Tomorrow the price will rise, but lucky you, you’re here on the last day of the year that you can still buy at our low, low price and terms.

You’ve got to make a house easy to buy. Terms are often critical. No matter how much buyers want a house, and how ready they may be, they’ve got to be financially able to buy it? That will depend upon their financial capacity and the loan terms YOU can arrange for them. You’ll notice that YOU’VE got to line up the financing that will enable them to buy your house. Buyer’s may not know how to do it. If you don’t either, you’ll need to find a real “can do” mortgage broker who can find institutional or private financing that will enable our buyers to buy.

You might take the buyers’ house in trade to ease the financing problem, or agree to carry back a second mortgage with no payments for a time so they can qualify for a new loan. You might lease their old house with a purchase Option until it can be sold in order to provide buyers funds with which to pay their new mortgage. You might place a mortgage over several properties — theirs, their families, or your own — to give a lender more security when a low credit score creates a problem. You can see, when loans dry up, that at the end of the day, being able to solve buyers’ financial problems is what is going to sell houses.

For more than 40 years, Jack Miller, has taught the most creative real estate investing techniques and strategies. His timely information is the most reliable and innovative in the real estate industry. Sign up for your FREE conference calls and weekly real estate lesson at http://www.CashFlowDepot.com