Our first week back running open homes is now in the past and as expected, it was quite a busy day.

With restrictions in place that meant a meant a maximum of 6 people in each property at any one time, we did have plenty of instances where eager buyers were lined up, but it was great to see that everyone (without exception) was very patient and certainly practiced responsible social distancing.

If you read my blog last week, you would remember my conundrum in booking open homes and ensuring we had enough time to show everyone through safely whilst still ensuring we weren’t late for the next open home.

With more good luck than good management, the day went far smoother than I could have imagined and we allowed the right amount of time for every single one of our properties.

We made quite a few sales on the day and the number of buyers out and about was very high.

What’s interesting is that the number of buyer enquiries we’ve had over the past week has gone to a level we’ve never seen before.

On average, we’d receive around 50-60 e-mail enquiries per week and around 60-70 phone enquiries per week.

Right now, we’re averaging approximately 40-50 e-mail enquiries per day and about 20-25 phone enquiries per day.

So where have all of these buyers suddenly come from?

We’re not really sure but it would appear that this might be the result of the backlog of buyers that have been itching to get out there and view properties from the time the recent Government restrictions were put in place.

What’s laughable to us is that the media is still so wrong about where the market is heading.

Every day, we’re reading reports of the market losing 10% value in only a couple of months and this is way off track – certainly in our area but agents all over Australia are reporting similar experiences so we’re not sure where they are obtaining their data.

In almost 21 years in real estate, I’ve honestly never seen such a scenario where the media (and consequently, the general public) have such an opposite opinion of what’s really happening.

I’m sure it won’t take long before they obtain relevant data and turn their opinions around.

It seems rather ironic that a few weeks ago, I started with the current topic…‘Tips On Selling In A Challenging Market’ and here we are now with two consecutive weeks of record numbers of buyer enquiries.

I’ve shared my first few tips with you where we’ve recommended to leave nothing to do in order to attract the highest number of buyers, ensuring that it is immaculately clean and making sure that your agent employs the method of sale that best suits your property and the current market.

Today, I’ll share with you my next tip…

4. Obtaining Maximum Competition Through Social Proof – This might sound a little bit vague but it’s vitally important to create competition amongst buyers by simply allowing them to eyeball each other at an inspection. This can be a little more difficult when you’re Social Distancing but it’s exactly why we wanted to make sure we didn’t allow too long at our open homes last weekend as we still wanted buyers to see how much competition they had. If you don’t believe this, imagine you’re approaching two restaurants and don’t know which one to choose if you want to eat. One is packed with people and has a real ‘vibe’ to it whilst the other is almost empty. Your inclination is to choose to the quieter one if you’d like a quiet meal with your partner but your instinct is to gravitate towards the busy one – after all, there must be a good reason why it’s so busy. Property is no different – everyone tends to want what everyone else wants. When property values are a subjective opinion, it’s even more important to create a scenario where there’s more inspections occurring than those of properties that are your competition. Make sure you ask your agent…” What else are you going to do to attract buyers other than place it on the large internet portals and wait for the phone to ring?” A good agent should be able to show you at least another 3-4 methods for attracting buyers outside of advertising on the more popular websites. 

5. The Quality Of Marketing – This might seem like an obvious point but when buyers have more choice, they look harder for ways to eliminate properties on their inspection list. As such, the written advertisement needs to be enticing, informative and a clear cut above those of other agents in the area. Sometimes I receive criticism for writing very long adverts, but the psychology is that the longer the advertisement, the more value the property appears to have…and the longer a buyer will spend looking at the advert. The longer a buyer spends looking at the advert, the more likely they are to inspect. It baffles me when an agent writes an advert with a very generic heading and a few bullet points such as ‘4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, double lock-up garage’ etc. An agent has probably just described 50% of the homes in the suburb so it’s hardly a way to showcase to a buyer why they should take time to come and see it if it seems like it doesn’t offer any significant points of difference. Additionally, the photographs need to be as good as they possibly can be and the property needs to be well-positioned online so that the maximum number of buyers are seeing it. There are reports generated by the online portals where you can compare how your property is tracking against how other properties in your suburb…and more to the point, how your agent performs with their listings compared to how the other agents perform. A good agent should be able to clearly demonstrate how they attract more buyers with their marketing than other agents do. Everything is measurable these days – online views, inspection numbers, prices – it’s all there in black and white.

For weeks now, I’ve tried to get away from talking about Coronavirus but the Coronavirus just seems to suck me back in.

I’m back of track with another topic…well almost.

Next week, we’ll delve further into tips for selling in a challenging market…that’s if we ever get to a challenging market in the short term.

Until then, Happy Listing and Happy Selling.