The 3 Things That Will Make or Break Your Listing in 2025

You don’t out-market bad pricing. Nail price first—then these three levers multiply results: staging, elite photos, and a true digital campaign.

1) Staging (or Virtual Staging)

• Staged homes sell higher; empty rooms feel cold and confusing.
• Options: soft stage (optimize owner’s furniture + textiles), full stage (vacant key rooms), or virtual stage (minimum for any vacant space).
• Strategy: set expectations on rental terms (30–60 days). Consider: agent covers initial term; seller covers renewals.
• Pro tips: keep the heat on; stage primary living, kitchen, owner’s suite; virtual stage secondary bedrooms.
  
  

2) Next-Level Photography (not iPhone, not “family photographer”)

• Hire a real-estate pro: proper lenses, multi-exposure/bracketing so interiors + window views read clean.
• Camera height ≈ eye level; no low angles that turn counters into walls.
• Always add aerials for lot/amenities context.
• Include a floor plan (place as photo #2 or #3 so buyers actually see it). It pre-qualifies showings and reduces tire-kickers.
• Tested stance: skip Matterport in this market—virtual nitpicking kills showings; emotion happens in person.
  
  

3) Digital-First Marketing (paid, not “post and pray”)

• Build a dedicated property site and drive paid traffic (YouTube, Meta, Google). Organic reach is dead.
• The formula: more targeted digital eyeballs → more showings → more offers—if price and presentation align.
• Sync visuals + copy across channels; the first showing happens online.

Quick Wins (Seller Checklist)

• Price with current comps; you can’t fix wrong price with photos.
• Approve a staging plan (at least virtual for vacant). Heat on during market time.
• Demand pro photo + drone + floor plan. Review shot list before shoot.
• Ask where ad dollars will be spent, the audience, and weekly reporting cadence.

Agent Ops (Process You Can Steal)

• Staging SOP: options matrix, cost/term policy, renewal script.
• Photo SOP: approved shooters, angle/height spec, mandatory drone + floor plan, gallery order (hero → key rooms → yard → floor plan).
• Marketing SOP: property site build, ad budgets by channel, weekly analytics report to seller.
  
  

Get price right. Stage the story. Shoot it like a magazine. Pay to put it in front of the right buyers. That’s how you win—consistently.

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Transcript

Mike Novak:

[0:33] Episode number 41, the three things that make or break your listing in 2025 and I would even

say in 2026 at this point as it's, you know, middle to end of November. And we're having lots of

conversations with sellers right now about listing in 2026 and setting the stage for that. So today's

topic is going to be super relevant to our agent friends and our network at real. And then also to

sellers, you know, like these are expectations that you should be having with your agent. And I

think you'll be better informed to have conversations of more depth with your real estate agent and

be able to ask better questions after today's podcast. You think that's realistic, Rachel?

Rachael Novak:

[1:13] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think this is very tactical. And honestly, like when we talk about

where real estate has evolved and kind of morphed over the last 10, 20 years, these things are

non-negotiables when it comes to really actually getting top dollar. Will houses sell in some markets

without these things? Sure. Will they sell for absolute top dollar? No, probably not.

Mike Novak:

[1:35] No, they definitely won't. And the days of just throwing it on the market in 2020 and 2021,

those are long gone. I mean, I talk to agents all across the country, and the days on market have

gone up drastically everywhere. Lots more inventory. You really need to think about how to have a

competitive advantage on making your listing stand out from the competition to be the obvious

choice to buyers, right? And, you know, we've talked a lot about price and we're not going to really

go into price today, but, price is super important. Like you can't out market the wrong price. We

always tell people that, you know, so that's one of the most important things. We got to hold a

YouTube video about how to price your home right here, right now in this market. So go watch that

if you want some insights in that. But ultimately, if you get the price wrong, none of the rest of this

matters. But if you get the price right in conjunction with all these other details, then really

interesting things happen. You know, just in the last couple of weeks, I'll share a couple of wins

from our team, Chuck, from our team, shout out to Chuck, he sold a listing for $105,000 over list

price. I think he had 10 plus offers on it. It was insane. I sold one for $25,000 over list price and

seven offers. So we're still getting multiple offers in certain situations. But when we get a reaction

from the market like that, it means that we've nailed the price, the position, and the presentation.Rachael Novak:

[2:51] Exactly.

Mike Novak:

[2:51] So we really have three different dynamics that we have to think about. And we can't

understate the value of pricing. Like it's super important.

Rachael Novak:

[2:59] Right. Obviously.

Mike Novak:

[3:00] Yeah. Okay. But let's jump into it. The first one, staging or virtual staging, you know, National

Association of Realtors love them or hate them. They have lots of data and they do lots of studies.

And the data from NAR shows that stage homes sell for about 4% more money. Think about that.

That's a huge difference.

Rachael Novak:

[3:18] 4% more. That more than pays for your listing side commission likely.

Mike Novak:

[3:23] Right. And yeah, We coach all of our clients to do some form of staging. What we ultimately

advise them to do is unique to their situation, depending on whether the home's vacant, whether if

it's being lived in, whatever else. There's a lot of variables that we look at, but sometimes we will do

full staging. Sometimes we'll do just soft staging based on what's already there.

Rachael Novak:

[3:43] And for those who may not be familiar, so when we say things like soft staging or hard of

home staging, soft staging is when we're utilizing the client's furniture. They're still living there. And

we are just helping them optimize the location of the furniture, the layout of each room. And then

we may bring in textiles like white, comforters put over their their comforters extra pillows on the

couches extra plants around the home to kind of spruce up the greenery that kind of thing that's

what we called soft staging for a heart of home stage that would be like a vacant home that we hire

a professional stager coming in bringing all the furniture for a primary suite dining room kitchen and

living room and as well as the bathrooms and then a virtual stage is typically also done on virtual

on a vacant homes or vacant rooms where there's literally just graphic design furniture placed on

the photos so that the marketing of the photos online looks staged.

Mike Novak:

[4:39] Right. And I think vacant homes at a bare minimum need that virtual staging. Absolutely.

When you look at marketing photos online and you see empty rooms, it feels really cold and you're

not really sure what do you have to do with the space.

Rachael Novak:

[4:53] That's exactly right.Mike Novak:

[4:53] So it doesn't cost a lot of money to do that. It just requires working with a marketing partner

that has capabilities to do so.

Rachael Novak:

[4:59] Well, because let's think about this, right? Like at the base of decisions for buyers is the

emotion, right? You're trying to attach the emotion of that, of what they're looking for to that home,

to that property. And when a buyer is looking through listings and they see a home that looks like a

beautiful home, I actually know several on the market right now, new construction or big, beautiful

new homes or cosmetic remodels that the pictures online, they have no furniture in them. They feel

very cold. You're looking at this photo and you see two walls and some flooring. You don't know if

it's the corner of a living room. You don't know if it's a dining area. You don't know if, staging, even

virtual staging does, is it gives identity and depth to every single one of those pictures and every

single one of those rooms. So a buyer can actually connect and start picturing themselves living in

that room. That's what the point of this marketing is.

Mike Novak:

[5:52] Absolutely. Yeah. As far as like the strategy in the current market, I think it's a little different

than it was when the days on market were a lot less. As the agent, you don't want to be in a

position where you've paid to stage this house and then you have staging renewals coming up

every month, you know, so maybe think about whether the client pays for staging, whether you pay

for like the initial staging, they pay for the monthly, some kind of hybrid mix of that. But the last

thing you want to do is kind of have an open checkbook for staging, where the home can be on the

market for six months, and every month you're getting hit with another $1,200 bill, you know, that'll

quickly make your listing very unprofitable.

Rachael Novak:

[6:26] Absolutely. And like, there's ways to navigate that. So, you know, you can set expectations

with the seller or as a seller, you can understand that most staging companies, if they do bring,

furniture in, the staging contract is going to last 30, 45, at the longest I've ever seen one is 60 days.

And so you can just kind of either as an agent, you can set the expectation with your seller, hey, I

am going to cover it for the first initial term, whether that's 30, 45, or 60 days. And then if the seller

wants the option to cover the renewals, okay, or just have that expectation set. Hey, after this time,

it's not going to be staged anymore, but we will, of course, still maintain the photos of the staged

property online.

Mike Novak:

[7:05] Yeah. And then explain why you don't stage secondary bedrooms to just so that sellers

understand that, you know, I do recommend doing virtual staging on secondary bedrooms still, but I

think that it's unnecessary to hard stage them. So we are all about case studies, like using practical

examples for you. And so case study where we did this, I took over an expired listing in Lake

Stevens. It had been listed with three different agents. When I got it, and the guy called me, it had

been on the market for 125 days, the glaring like obvious miss on the marketing was it was super

cold and it was vacant right like it was just empty when you walked in there's just like oh man i just

want to leave because it's freezing cold thermostats turned off huge mistake and it doesn't feel likea home it feels like a house you know what i mean and staging is really that thing that warms it up

so we staged it we had it sold in three weeks also.

Rachael Novak:

[7:52] Then turn the thermostat up.

Mike Novak:

[7:53] Yeah we wanted to stay in there i called the seller who had moved out it seems like man if

you want to sell this house you have have to turn the heat on. So pro tip to all of you sellers out

there, don't turn the heat off when you list your house. Exactly right.

Rachael Novak:

[8:06] So that's when it comes to staging. So number one, top three things is staging or virtual

staging for the property. Okay. Number two, your photography needs to be next level. Gone are the

days that you can have, you know, your sister-in-law who is just getting into photography, use her

Canon camera and take some photos. Gone are the days that you can take, you know, even

probably your self-professional quote-unquote photos with a nice camera, but especially anybody

who's ever taken photos with an iPhone or, God forbid, a flip phone photos.

Mike Novak:

[8:39] Right? The iPhone one is the one that I see a lot because iPhones take nice photos. They

don't take nice home photos.

Rachael Novak:

[8:44] Correct. So there's a couple of things that are involved with a photography. Number one,

obviously, it needs to be a real estate professional photographer. Like, yes, and we're talking

several hundred dollars for this person to come out and photograph the property. But they are the

ones who have already invested in the correct flashes and the correct lenses and the correct, you

know, exposures. They get like those five frame exposures so that you can see in each photo, not

just the interior of the home, but that you can see outside of the window. If you notice with really

cheap cameras, they'll take a decent picture of the inside, kind of, but then it will be all glary on the

window. You won't be able to see outside. And real estate professional photographers have the

photos or the cameras and the lenses to be able to capture all of that because you need that depth

as part of the photos. Number two is... Absolutely need to have aerial photography, especially on

properties with nice backyards or great lots or in a great vicinity to amenities. People want to see in

real time, not just Google Earth, not just, you know, Google Street View. They want to see in real

time in the listing where the home is, what the yard is like, what it looks like from the top. That's

totally a must have. We've been doing that for years and years.

Mike Novak:

[10:00] Why is like the person that does like family photo is not the person to use for real estate

photography.

Rachael Novak:

[10:06] It's just not, it's simply not the same exposure, right? When you are having a professional

real estate photographer take real estate photos, there is a particular angle and height that thecamera should be to get the right photos. You'll see some newer real estate photographers who

may charge a lot and may consider themselves professional. And if you look at the photo, if their

camera is too low, you will notice that you are seeing half of the photo be like the countertop in the

kitchen and then the top half of the photo is the kitchen or in a bedroom you'll see okay I can see

all of this bed and then I can see the window and the top of the photo like these little things matter

that the presentation of these photos a presentation of the property matters it what you want to look

for in professional real estate photography is that the camera is just at about eye level of where you

would actually be standing in the home. Yeah.

Mike Novak:

[11:02] So where your eyes are at.

Rachael Novak:

[11:03] Yes. So if you are walking through a property, you're not seeing, you're not down below. If

you're watching on YouTube, you can see the ducking down, down below where you can see all

the, the, the countertops at eye level. You're looking at the cabinets. You're looking out the

windows. You're seeing the tops of the furniture. This is an important viewpoint that real estate,

good real estate photographers can capture in those photos.

Mike Novak:

[11:25] Yeah, for sure. Okay. So case study on this one, a really recent one for you. Just last month,

I had some clients, they called me, they had listed their home with Redfin and they said, I'm not

going to say no shade.

Rachael Novak:

[11:36] No shade, but you know.

Mike Novak:

[11:37] You get what you pay for. Anyways, it was on the market for 80 days. They have done price

reductions, nothing, totally stagnant. We took it over. We virtually staged this one. We did not

physically stage it, even though it was empty. We really stepped it up on the photography and the

photography allowed us to sell it for full price in four days.

Rachael Novak:

[11:57] That's huge. Huge for those clients.

Mike Novak:

[11:59] Absolutely. It's a totally different presentation of the market than what it was.

Rachael Novak:

[12:02] One bonus when it comes to photography and including, you know, as much information and

beautification in the listing as possible is putting a floor plan in. And now we've been doing this for

five or six years. There was literally a time when the market was moving so quickly. But by the time

we got the floor plan back digitally and uploaded it into the listing of the day, it was like we're

pending it the next day. Right. But this is incredibly important, especially in today's market when

buyers are uncertain. Buyers have a lot of options. If they are constantly you know that they'regoing to go back and look at the same listing five, six, seven, eight, 12, 20 times, even after they've

looked at it before they make a decision of whether or not to offer. And if you have a floor plan in

yours, they can literally look at that floor plan, stare at it and confirm that that layout is what they

want. Right they're going to be walking through that home and imagining their daughter in that

bedroom and imagining their their couch in that corner of the living room or whatever else that's a

really important part of the listing as well that we've implemented for a long time.

Mike Novak:

[13:04] Yep no great great point all right the third one is your marketing and so the reality is that

most agents are not doing marketing they're listing the home in the mls and they're printing flyers

off and they're doing open houses that's not marketing you guys like that that is not aggressively

and proactively putting the home in front of people right right but unfortunately that that's the plan

that most agents have yeah we always joke about putting a sign in the yard i think damon gutier is

the first one that told us this is a sign in the yard lock box on the house and they pray saying a

prayer yeah but that's just that's just not doing your client any any service or any favors at all so

and that's it's.

Rachael Novak:

[13:40] Also not differentiating you you know as an agent and to be any different than anybody else

in the market.

Mike Novak:

[13:47] Right. Yeah. And so we call it proactive versus reactive marketing. Reactive would just be

putting the MLS and waiting for a buyer agent to bring a buyer along. That is what unfortunately

95% of real estate agents do on top of open houses. For us, ours is all digital. So about 95% of

home buyers find the home they're going to buy online. And so ours is very digital focused. We

build every single client to their own dedicated website. The URL is the address of their home

typically. And then that website becomes the landing page for all the paid emphasis on paid traffic

we send to their site. Organic placement on social media for listings is dead.

Rachael Novak:

[14:23] It's not going to go anywhere.

Mike Novak:

[14:25] Agents, if you think posting the house on your personal Facebook page is marketing listing, I

have a wake up call for you. No one's going to freaking see it and no one cares it's going to see it.

Rachael Novak:

[14:34] No, that's not totally true. Your grandma or your aunt or your friends may see it, maybe

depending on their algorithm, but no actual buyers who are in their buying cycle who would be

interested in that type of property are going to see that when you post on your personal Facebook

page.

Mike Novak:

[14:52] Correct. We're in a pay to play environment. The reach of organic social media is really gone

down over the last seven years. So you have to pay if you want to get in front of people. So we doInstagram, we do Facebook, we do YouTube, and we get our listings in front of tens of thousands

of eyeballs that are passively looking for homes, right? Like they might not be consciously out there

typing into the MLS a home search. Maybe they are, maybe they're not. But if they see the right

thing, maybe they're interested.

Rachael Novak:

[15:20] Absolutely.

Mike Novak:

[15:20] And we know that there's kind of a formula that the more people that see the home digitally

translates into more showings, the more showings translates into more offers or a quicker sale.

Rachael Novak:

[15:30] Exactly. And again, there has to be an alignment between the price... And the perception of

value that buyers have in any market, right? So if they're seeing this home and they're like, oh man,

that's really cute. I'm really interested in that. And the price is 100k over what they would expect or

what any buyer in any market would expect, you're going to continue to get a significant amount of

clicks and no showings.

Mike Novak:

[15:56] Right. And the interesting thing about that is there's a lot of people that aren't actually

actively looking for a home to buy, But if the right thing comes along, they're a buyer.

Rachael Novak:

[16:04] Yes, exactly. How many people have we literally had be like.

Mike Novak:

[16:07] Well. No, they're like, I need to get pre-approved and buy a house right now. Like, I want that

house. Like, it's like this emotional feeling like, I got to do this right now. You know, it's crazy when it

happens, but it happens all the time.

Rachael Novak:

[16:17] Well, and again, like playing back into why the staging, why the great photography is

important on these listings when you're marketing them. Because you're trying to appeal to the

emotion of those buyers who would move for the right house.

Mike Novak:

[16:29] Right, exactly. And we always tell our clients, you know, the first showing happens online. So

this is kind of the culmination of all these things working synergistically together. The staging is

coming together, the soft staging, the every room presentation. And then of course, the

photography and the videography that you put together, the drone shots, those all come together

onto that website to make the home really shine digitally, which entices people to come out and see

it in person.

Rachael Novak:

[16:54] Exactly.Mike Novak:

[16:55] And then one other thing we didn't mention on the floor plan, just to highlight, we the floor

plan does definitely turn off some people. There's some people that it's going to say, Hey, I, I, that

house wouldn't work for me, but that's actually one of the reasons we like to do is disqualify buyers

where the floor plan is just not a fit. Like maybe they can't do stairs and they didn't realize there's,

you know, all the bedrooms are upstairs or something like that. It qualifies the showings to a higher

degree than if you don't see a floor plan, right?

Rachael Novak:

[17:20] Exactly.

Mike Novak:

[17:20] So you might get less showings, but the showings you get are going to be more qualified

because they've already vetted out the floor plan. And then pro tip for your agent friends, again, like

don't put your floor plan on the last photo of the listing put it on the second or third photo because

no buyer clicks to the end of the listing 40 photos they're never gonna see it exactly and if you don't

think floor plans work go look at what every builder does in their marketing they all have floor plans

they do it for reasons because it's what every buyer wants to see every.

Rachael Novak:

[17:43] Single new construction listing has a floor plan right exactly.

Mike Novak:

[17:46] So we didn't talk about Matterport so what's your thoughts on Matterport so.

Rachael Novak:

[17:49] This this is that's been a really interesting one because Matterport, I really liked long ago.

For whatever reason, it really hit. People really enjoyed walking through it digitally before going and

seeing it in person. But in a climate where there is so much uncertainty anyways, and in any

market, but especially this type of market, buyers walk into properties looking for reasons not to like

the home, right? Literally, that's their mindset. Whether it's subconscious or not, that's their

mindset. And so what happens when you upload a Matterport while it's cool marketing for the seller.

And as a seller, it feels really good. And even as a listing agent, it may feel really like, look at all this

marketing I'm doing as Matterport. But let's think about it from the perspective and the viewpoint of

a buyer.

Rachael Novak:

[18:31] If I'm a buyer and I'm already skeptical and I'm already uncertain and I go digitally and

virtually walk through that property, I will have considered and felt like I've walked through it. And if

I'm walking through it virtually and I see one little thing that I don't think that I like very much, I'm

going to count that listing out. Okay. Whereas that exact same buyer who, okay, this floor plan

could work because I can see the floor plan. The pictures look good. It looks like it's in good

condition, decent, perfect location, all this stuff. And then they physically go walk through it. There

is a much different feeling and emotion that they experience walking through that property. And thatone little thing, whether it's the color of the countertops or the location of the fireplace or whatever

little thing that they may have seen and discounted the house virtually.

Rachael Novak:

[19:22] Walking through it in person and getting that feeling and feeling the walls around them, that

could be a no big deal all of a sudden. and now they like the home, right? So in my opinion,

Matterport is going to push away more buyers that actually could be qualified buyers for that

property more so than they do a great job marketing the property.

Mike Novak:

[19:44] Yeah, to me, the marketing, you know, it's really designed to invoke interest and curiosity,

which then triggers a showing. And like you said, if people see Matterports, they often feel like

they've already seen the home. And it's very difficult. It's not impossible. was very difficult to trigger

an emotional reaction from someone off of a screen.

Rachael Novak:

[20:04] It's almost completely impossible.

Mike Novak:

[20:05] You have to go in and feel it, like you're saying. That's exactly right. You can't feel it until you

actually go see it in person. So that's why we don't believe in doing it. Some agents do it. If it works

for you, that's awesome. But we did test this like 20 or 30 times.

Rachael Novak:

[20:18] We did. We did dozens and dozens of them.

Mike Novak:

these reasons.

[20:20] And yeah, it used to be a part of our process like six years ago, and it's just not anymore for

Rachael Novak:

[20:24] Yeah, well, and we've talked a lot about the buyer consultation and setting the expectations.

And the expectation that we set with buyers is that we want them to fall in love with the home. And

you... It would be like online dating and never meeting anybody in person and expecting you're

going to fall in love with somebody online without ever meeting them. Like, it's impossible. So if we

if the goal is to get a buyer to fall in love with the home or find the home, they're going to fall in love

with. You have to get them to walk through it.

Mike Novak:

[20:54] Yeah, 100 percent. Awesome. Well, so there's three really great things. Staging the

photography and the marketing. You got to have a plan for each one of those things. And as a

seller, you need to make sure you're asked the right questions to your agent to make sure they

have a plan for those things. You've got some due diligence to do on the agent you choose to work

with. And it's totally fair game to ask questions about these three things and a lot more things to like

experience negotiating and things like that. So that's what we've got for you this week. Next week,

we'll be back again. It's going to be Thanksgiving week, but we're still recording. So we will hit youagain next week. And if you're buying or selling in our market, definitely reach out to us right here in

Snohomish County. Reach and I would love to help you guys. and if you're an agent across the

country or up in canada and you're curious about real brokerage reach out to us we went to real

brokerage in 2021 it is one of the best business decisions we've ever made for you to chat with you

about why we went there and possibly mentor you on your move over to real as well absolutely.

Rachael Novak:

[21:47] See you next time guys.