CGNW Team Admins: A Case Study

On Friday our team put two houses on the market. One is a charming condo in Leo’s neighborhood on Barkley Hill; the other is a little vacant house in the Marietta-Alderwood area. Here’s a glimpse into what had to happen to accomplish this:

Last Monday, one listing was visited by the team to get photographed and videoed, and a listing basket (hand sanitizer, shoe covers and disinfectant) was dropped off. This was repeated at site #2 the next day.  

Marketing remarks - the paragraph of descriptive text you see on Zillow and Redfin - were written that day and sent off to the sellers for their edits & approval. One set of professional photos arrived Tuesday, the second Wednesday.

Thursday we streamed Episode 4 of this season of the Building Bellingham podcast. It’s produced 100% in-house so all the tech and space setup, question prep, and coordination is done by our team. At the same time as Leo interviewed the owners of Greenhouse (then rushed off to a showing), Chris was working away on final details of the two listings. 

At 9:25AM Friday, we got an alert that the first listing was live on the MLS. The reverse prospecting list - a way we can see how many people received notification of a new listing within their search terms - was stacking up. Chris set up the online showing schedule so that showings only happen in a specific timeframe the sellers have agreed to.

Once the listing is live on the MLS, it’s go time for the marketing arm. Matterport 3D tours were ready to go.  Besides the MLS, Zillow, Redfin and other listing aggregators, we manually publish listings across 8-12 social media accounts. Each post has to be accurate and fit the tenor of that platform. 

As we’re in the middle of the holidays, Cooper was backlogged with special projects on top of our regular video production, so one walkthrough video came in early and one would arrive later in the afternoon on listing day. 

Oh, and Friday was also the due date for our monthly email newsletter. Tiffany had prepped it over the prior couple of days and put in placeholders for the information and media that wasn’t available yet. Right before noon is a great time to send out, and we managed to squeak it out just in time, at 11:51AM. 

Later that day, it was time to do it all over again.  Chris was out at the second property for part of the morning, and at 2:45PM, it was ready. On the marketing side, it was the same checklist - upload the video to Youtube, share that link to 3 other platforms, upload the video manually to Instagram and 4 separate Facebook pages. Make sure all the listing links, hashtags and slashes render properly on each site.

Later in the afternoon, our videographer sent out the other video and the link was added retroactively to all the normal places. 

Throughout the day, our phones were ringing, emails were buzzing, and Slack messages pinged with new updates from our team. The normal workday continued in the background, and by the end, every team member was happy to close their laptop and call it a good day.

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The story behind every listing is different. Real estate is a wide and varied industry, and our clients across Bellingham and Whatcom & Skagit counties have different needs and desires when it comes to prepping and promoting their properties. 

Sometimes there are weeks of repairs; sometimes we’re working around a tenant’s night shift sleeping schedule. Sometimes we have to have a home ready to list...so that as soon as our client gets their offer accepted on a new house we can put theirs on the market (contingent offers typically have a quick turnaround contractual requirement). 

In any case, getting a home ready for sale is a process, one that has moving parts, plenty of people involved, and schedules that have to be coordinated. Each member of the sales & admin team here at the Cohen Group NW has specific responsibilities that play to our individual strengths, and because of that system, we’re able to present a high volume of high-quality listing packages.