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→ If you’re thinking about selling your property soon or you have a property currently for sale there are many things you can do to maximise the probability of getting the best possible result.
⬢ THE PRICE
Of course, the number one variable! When you agree on a ‘marketing price’ this should be based on factual market evidence and not simply be the price you’d prefer. It’s important to remember that the purpose of a marketing price is to attract maximum interest, it's not necessarily the price your property is worth and of course that can be higher or lower than true market value, which is always unknown until a sale occurs.
Deciding on this price is often where mistakes happen. In fact, the wrong marketing price can seriously affect your chances of achieving a premium price. Too high and your property may not attract enough interest and stagnate on the market; too low and you will attract people who are unable to pay the premium price even if they wanted to. It could be that you and your agent feel your property should be worth £1,500,000, but it’s agreed that the best marketing approach to adopt is to ask for £1,450,000.
The marketing price is also heavily dictated by your personal circumstance. If you're looking for a quick sale then a very different price can be set than if you just want to try your luck in a strong market. These factors along with the hyper local market conditions and available stock should all be considered by an experienced agent. They will craft the strategy to ensure you can attain the most possible with your personal circumstances taken into account.
It’s usually best to market at a round figure, i.e. £1,400,000 as opposed to £1,399,950. This will mean you appear in searches ‘up to £1,400,000’ and also ‘from £1,400,000’. At £1,399,950, you would only appear in searches ‘up to £1,400,000’.
⬢ THE MARKETING MATERIAL
Work with your agent to arrange for photographs to be taken and any brochures to be prepared. Remember, you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression, so quality is crucial, especially when you consider that the majority of buyers will be searching online. Depending on the value of your home it may pay to invest in drone and/or video, particularly if it is attractive from the exterior, is part of a large estate, or is in an incredible location. Do not underestimate the value in spending money here, or getting your agent to. The total cost of which will be microscopic compared to the value of your sale.
Make sure the property brief or description is ‘benefits’-focussed’ and does not simply list the features.
Buyers want to hear about the lifestyle that comes with the property and whether or not it could be their next home. Consider what you would tell a friend about an incredible property you stayed in - you would talk about the lifestyle you enjoyed rather than the statistics. Of course these are necessary, but the sale is all about generating a momentum in the buyer from the very first time they are made aware of the property, through to negotiations and exchange.
In fact according to Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman (an expert in the field), 95% of purchases are made unconsciously. Meaning the purchase just 'feels' right. Essentially the mind of the buyer has already calculated whether this is the property for them without them logically assessing it in their conscious mind. There are of course many things you can do to prepare the path to that outcome, and the initial marketing material and strategy is the first.
⬢ THE LAUNCH
If you are opting for a full marketing launch your property should be launched onto the market and details uploaded to all the major property portals. At any one time, there will be a pool of buyers looking to buy a property just like yours, with thousands of them registered to receive new property alerts on Rightmove alone.
Ensure your agent is a member of all the property portals including Rightmove, Zoopla, Onthemarket and Prime Location, often agents are members of two.
The demand is there – you just have to make sure that your property is marketed in such a way as to attract your potential buyers online. In the first instance this comes down to two factors: price and marketing material, ie: what is it and how much is it? Of course you can launch your property in a myriad of different ways, off-market, on-market, soft-market, social only... the list goes on but the strategy should be carefully considered by your agent.
⬢ PASSIVE BUYER MARKET
All ‘active’ buyers will be regularly searching for a property online so it’s very important that you have a significant online presence. But what about the ‘passive buyer’? Ask any estate agent and they will tell you that they have, at some point, sold a property to a buyer who wasn’t actively looking.
They are more of an opportunist buyer. You know the type... the one who saw the board on the school run... the one who would ‘love to buy that house if it ever came on the market’ or perhaps the one who would ‘buy a property in that block if one ever came up for sale’. Often these buyers are the type to wait for the right house to come up before they spring into action.
You need to market to these buyers. A For Sale board is a great way to do this locally (if it is allowed in your area), but what about the opportunist buyer who isn’t so local?
A great way to attract these potential buyers is to place an advert on social media channels, targeting your demographic of your likely buyer.
It goes without saying of course that your agent should be working their registered buyer list as well as talking with search agents and presenting your property to them. This will be most important when you are selling off-market, your agent’s buyer and search agent connections in your market will then become extremely valuable.
⬢ MONITOR AND IMPROVE
One week into marketing your property, you should ensure that your agent is monitoring the effectiveness of the marketing and analysing the ‘Click Through Rate’ (CTR) on the property portals; making improvements or changes where necessary.
Usually there will be around 8-16 images of your property featured online, use them all and ensure your agent is rotating these regularly to keep your property imagery fresh. It may be, for example, the kitchen image that creates the ‘click through’ which leads to you selling your home for a premium price. The lead image is therefore very important and it should be carefully considered for the potential market you are appealing to.
⬢ THE ENQUIRIES
Make sure all enquiries are captured 24/7 and an enquiry is never missed. It is important to ensure that your estate agent will never miss a telephone call and, therefore, potentially an enquiry/opportunity/viewing. That missed call could mean you have just lost the buyer who would be willing to pay a premium price for your property. The development of the internet and smartphones has meant that information is now available at our fingertips and that we, as a society, have become very demanding.
If someone is interested in your home and wants to view it immediately but can’t reach your agent, they’re more than likely to view the house around the corner from you instead.
You may well have lost that potential buyer. Ask your agent how and who handles their enquiries.
⬢ THE VIEWING STRATEGY
It’s crucial that viewings are carried out correctly. If not, steps one to six would have been pointless.
Here are a few golden rules:
• Always have your agent show buyers around, don’t be present. Buyers feel more comfortable and will be more honest. If it’s not for them, you want to know quickly and move on, not have them spend 30 mins trying not to hurt your feelings. If they want to talk price, they won’t want to do this in front of you. Worse, it has been known for sellers to put their foot in it when talking with potential buyers on viewings, creating issues where there should be none.
• The aim of a viewing is to ‘show’ the buyer, let them ‘buy’ the house emotionally. Can an agent ‘sell’ the house? Not entirely, though if they can read the buyer, close off any negative avenues quickly as well as mention things that are not apparent on the viewing. For example school catchments, location benefits etc. Then they can allow the buyer to feel positively by eliminating unknown niggles that can sway the buyer to a second viewing.
• First viewings are emotional, second viewings are more logical. This is why it's so important for your agent to know everything there is to know about your property, such that they can answer questions confidently. There is nothing worse to a buyer than not getting the proper answers to their enquiries immediately. Ensure the agent that knows your property is always the one viewing it, very often it won't be!
• Always make sure that your house is spotless and is prepared for the showing. De-clutter and ensure the kitchen and bathrooms are clean, as well as of course outside areas. That immediate visual snapshot a buyer has when seeing your property in person for the first time will live on with them during negotiations. This really can't be laboured enough. Sellers simply don't see things that somebody seeing your property for the first time sees. Ask your agent for honest feedback and what should be updated, corrected or changed. Money spent here is always worth it.
⬢ THE FEEDBACK
Honest, unfiltered feedback from every single viewing is crucial to your sale success as it will help with step ten.
On average it will take about ten viewings to secure a buyer and as a property can have only one buyer, feedback from the other nine people can help you secure that offer. What you do with it is what counts. Detach yourself emotionally from the feedback and act upon quickly, if it is something that can be fixed. For example, if your agent is telling you that the dark hallways are killing it, then have them re-painted in light neutral colours. Work smart and logically to correct issues rapidly.
⬢ THE REVIEW
After four to six weeks, if your property is still for sale, then you and your agent need to have a face-to-face meeting to review the marketing and interest to date.
Look at the marketing reports and CTR reports, examine the feedback reports and market comparable reports that show similar properties that have been sold whilst yours has been on the market.
Discuss a plan to move forward which may involve reducing the price or taking it off the market to do works and/or to re-list it in the next market cycle.
⬢ THE NEGOTIATION
The most crucial part. In fact, steps one to nine will also have been followed in vain if you and your agent gets this part wrong. By this stage, you would have hopefully received a number of offers from competing buyers, so it’s important that this part of the plan is handled with care.
Remember that most buyers will have made an offer on the basis of at least some degree of emotional attachment to your property and although you don’t want to manipulate that, you do want to use it to your advantage, so don’t be afraid to negotiate hard.
Almost always, the first offer somebody puts in on a house is not their final offer, despite what they may tell you. Don’t be offended by low offers.
Any offer is a start, it means someone wants to buy your property.
It’s down to your agent to negotiate correctly and achieve the highest price possible. If you receive one or more offers early on in the marketing process, be very cautious in trying to beat the market and hold out for more. Research shows that the best offers usually come in during the first four weeks of marketing a property, after that it gets harder on average to get a good price.
Make sure every offer is correctly qualified, identifying both the potential buyers’ chain and financial position before entering into negotiations with them. Between 20%-40% of property sales fall through before the exchange of contracts. One of the main reasons being that the correct due diligence wasn’t carried out by the estate agent at the point of negotiation, or that the agent failed to read the buyer and their intentions. An experienced agent will know when a buyer is making a knee jerk reaction which will come to nothing and when a sale is cast iron.
Sometimes the highest offer is not the best if there is financing issues. Instead it can be used to leverage a more proceedable party to increase their offer. Listen to your estate agent and what they are recommending, they have usually seen it all and usually do know the best course of action to take. Of course don't be afraid to question your agent and their strategies, after all they are working for you.
→ Congratulations. If you and your agent have followed the above steps you should be well on your way to securing a sale. For further advice on the market and how to achieve the highest price please get in touch.
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Are you considering selling your property?
If you're considering selling your property and looking for expert advice on the local market and how to get the best result, do get in touch:
020 3150 0733 / hello@moveli.co.uk
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