I’m excited to be sharing my seventeen years of Real Estate marketing and sales experience with you and hope that you can use this knowledge when the time co memes to sell or buy.
So, I thought I would start with a question that many home sellers ask themselves, or their agent, before and during the sales process: How will buyers find my place when it is for sale?
If you had of asked me that about fifteen years ago, the answer would have been: About 50% of buyers look in the paper; another 20% look in windows, 20% drive around looking for signs and the other 10% look on the internet (‘it’ll never work’ said the Board of Fairfax).
Yep, when I first started in real estate, agents in any given office, would fight for ‘floor time’ to deal with the buyers who were looking at the window cards, walking in the office door and asking “Hey, what have you got with three beds and a shed for $150,000?” or taking the calls from buyers ringing about a home they saw in the paper or drove by the day before.
Agents could spend all day with a ‘walk in’ buyer, driving them to any number of homes, hoping that they would like one, then keep the buyer captive long enough to get back to the office to organise an offer.
Wow! How times have changed! Today, 90%-95% of home buyer enquiry is generated by the two biggest web sites in Australia – realestate.com.au and domain.com.au. Social media is folding into that mix; whilst signage acts as an important identifier for those buyers who are attending an inspection, open home or driving by after seeing the property online.
Agents’ windows now predominantly provide mild entertainment for those who might be waiting for their ten minute take-away to cook a few doors down.
Ok, if nearly all the enquiry for property comes in via the big web sites – what do agents do now?
The agent’s role has changed dramatically.
Today’s agent needs to be a tuned in marketer, savvy qualifier and razor-sharp negotiator.
