When you decide to sell your home and begin the process of appointing an agent, one of the first questions you’ll undoubtedly ask is, ‘What’s the best way to go about marketing and selling my property?’
What you’ll find is that many agents will try to push you straight into an expensive, full-scale campaign and assure you that they have great buyers in their database – often because these agents want the exposure. Our approach is a little different.
Putting Mosman homeowners first
Here at De Brennan, it’s 100% about our client and their circumstances. It’s not about me as a real estate agent getting another listing, another sale, or another dollar.
In my experience, we know that some people don’t want to go down the path of an intense property marketing campaign – perhaps it’s a privacy issue, or they’ve lost their job and don’t have the money upfront for expensive advertising. There can be a myriad of reasons.
For me, it’s about listening to the client, understanding what their motivation is, and determining how my team and I can help them.
Scenario #1 Off-market promotion
If I sense there’s reluctance on the client’s part at the prospect of a full campaign, I’ll recommend our off-market strategy first.
I’ll offer to demonstrate that I do actually have qualified buyers who I can bring through their home before we go through that full campaign process. Most of our clients really appreciate this step.
Instead of an expensive marketing campaign from the start, with an off-market listing, we prepare what we call an ebook with photography and a floorplan. We send this out only to prequalified clients in our database – those people who fit the specific property criteria – so we know who we’re actively dealing with. And we book inspections only by appointment; we do so discreetly, so there’s no danger of overexposure.
This way, we can provide you with another strategic option and show that you don’t have to feel forced into an aggressive, costly campaign that doesn’t work in your circumstances.
Scenario #2 Full property marketing campaign
A full property marketing campaign can run into ten’s of thousands of dollars when including printed newspaper advertising as well as an online advertising package. A full property marketing campaign can be a significant outlay of cash for many people.
But from the perspective of achieving your highest sales price, it’s the competitive edge that comes with this approach that is really important, and for that reason, I encourage it.
As humans, whether we like it or not, we thrive on competition. When you have 25 groups coming through an open home appointment within a compact period of time, everyone is looking at everyone else – it’s easy to quickly identify the truly interested buyers. They’ll always ring me afterwards and ask, ‘What do I have to do to make this happen?’ That’s when I can respectfully negotiate with interested parties and really do my utmost as your agent.
Pros and cons
The main downside with an off-market property sale is that you just don’t get that classic competitive component. You will always wonder whether the off-market price was the best you could achieve or whether we could have negotiated an even higher, more premium, result if you’d pursued the other path. That’s always the big question.
On the other hand, if the client doesn’t sell during that off-market period, nine times out of 10, they’re happy to go into that full campaign with us. By then, we’ve established trust and rapport; we’ve shown that we have good buyers – albeit not the right ones yet – and they appreciate that we’ve tried the off-market approach first.
Making the switch
With knowledge gleaned from buyer feedback during the off-market campaign, we can move forward more knowledgeably about what buyers note are the pros and cons with your home.
Typically, we shift to a full property marketing campaign within two weeks. But again, this depends on our client’s motivation.
If you’re happy to cruise along, then we can put your listing online and look at opportunities for cross-selling. We will outline all your options and provide our professional advice as to the best approach at the time, but it’s always about what our client feels most comfortable with and what’s important for you. This is what works for us, and it’s what I’ve built my reputation on.
