How to get a successful sale in a “buyer’s market”!

The latest figures from the “RP Data-Rismark Home Value Index” are not uplifting if you are a property investor (the value of your portfolio is shrinking, meaning you are not increasing your borrowing power and that you can’t re-invest, but you might smile if you are a first home buyer looking at buying in Brisbane (before the Queensland Building Boost Grant expires 31 January 2012). If you are selling because you want to up or downgrade your place of residence you should not be too concerned about the way the market is moving, unless you are not buying and selling at the same time.

The realities sellers of properties are facing in today’s market are:

Increased competition (some areas have up to 50% more properties listed for sale compared to a year ago)
On average much longer sales time on the market
Decreasing property values

So how do you get a quick sale in today’s market at a fair market value?

The main selling factors remain the same – they are what I refer to as the “3 P Factors”:

Price
Presentation
Promotion

The Price factor includes the component you always hear real estate agents talking about Location, Location & Location (or as I prefer to state it using a “P noun”: Position, Position & Position). There is one and only one component you can’t change when you buy a property and that is the “footprint” of the property meaning the size and position of the block of land or the size and position of a unit.

What you can change are the above “3 P Factors” and in today’s market you really need to be in front of the declining property market – not chasing it down! So the most important factor to consider will be your asking price. place2live is the agency that gives you access to ALL the recent sale stats that are available for your area so you should be able to determine what is the fair market value (based on the historic facts) for your property. In today’s declining market you should consider this figure as being the absolute maximum you can get (and you should NOT use this as your asking price (even when stating that the price is negotiable). What you should do (and this is obviously a very difficult task) is to decide the absolute minimum price you would be willing to accept and use this (hopefully very competitive) price tag in your advertisements. You might want to use a pricing statement like: “Seller will consider offers above $X” indicating that this price in NOT negotiable downwards only upwards! Because of the very attractive asking price you should expect to get a few interested buyers and hopefully have them competing for the property – the formal way of doing this will be to request the buyers to sign the form “ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF MULTIPLE OFFERS” – this serves 2 purposes:

the agent can’t be accused of not having informed the potential buyers about the existence of other competing offers being submitted to the seller(s)
the potential buyer will up front have to submit their best and final offer and they may not be given the opportunity to negotiate further

Often in a situation like this you may find that the offers submitted EXCEED the initial asking price (because the buyer recognizes that the fair market value for the property is ABOVE the actual asking price)!

In this kind of market, where you promote your property at an asking price that makes your property stand out as a very attractive offer compared to other properties you will obviously be very keen to not at the same time spend a fortune in marketing and sales commission, so you still will be able to walk away with a decent amount of money on settlement.

How can that be achieved you might ask (most traditional shop-front and franchise based real estate agencies all charge the same standard sales commission (for QLD sales this means 5% of the initial $18,000 of the sales price and 2.5% of the balance of the sales price plus 10% GST)?

You do have alternatives like place2live – a virtual (internet only based) real estate agency - with a streamlined operation that minimise the agencies operational costs and offers sellers a service where you are NOT charged the standard sales commission, but A-Fee-For-A-Service (like solicitors, dentists and auto mechanics). This means that you in a working2gether listing option will only be charged $4,499 all inclusive (including GST) if you sell your property within the initial 28 days it is listed for sale. For a median priced property in Brisbane (@ $402,000) you will save more than 61% in sales costs!

In the working2gether listing option your responsibilities will only be to:

Keep your property nice and tidy
Show the property to potential buyers (and open up the house for Pest & Building inspection, Bank Valuation inspection & Pre-settlement inspection)
Hand over keys to the property after settlement (or arrange for your solicitor to do this)

Your place2live property consultant will take care of the rest:

Assist you with getting your property listed for sale on the net
Manage all enquiries
Qualify buyers
Schedule inspection times
Send you an inspection confirmation SMS
Make follow-up calls after each inspection
Take offer details
Manage contract negotiations
Present contract details to your solicitor
Manage payment of deposit to your solicitor
Manage all non legal issues up to settlement

Please note you will NOT have to do any contract negotiations!

List your property for sale NOW with place2live: Go to the Listing Request web page and submit your listing request (select working2gether) or simply call us on 1800 place2live – 1800 752 232