How do you feel about fellow real estate agents that achieve a price far above market expectation, and then use that impressive result to promote their business? With many years as an agent and principal, as well as someone that has secured many impressive sale results, Real Estate Coach on Demand, Lisa B, offers her advice:
You sold a property over reserve, and in the process you sold a property for a record price. Congratulations! Of course you are excited and you want to promote your amazing achievement.
As real estate agents, we love to let people know about our successes — it helps us to convince future sellers to list with us. It helps us to show that we have a track record of getting great prices. It makes us look good! And from this great result, you now have two choices on how to promote yourself.
You can spruik how amazing you are and promote everywhere that YOU sold a property way above the reserve price (just know that you may upset your buyers and others), or you can do it another way.
New ways to promote
Why not announce your fantastic achievement in a way where YOU won’t upset your buyers, and a way that will work in your favour. Because let’s face it… some buyers get annoyed and upset at real estate agents who promote EVERYWHERE that a property they sold went for a record price.
Let’s say a young couple are purchasing their first home. They are feeling scared and are risking everything. At auction, they end up bidding way above their budget to buy their perfect home. Imagine how these buyers would feel if they paid $20,000 over reserve? What if they bid even higher and they bought $300,000 over reserve?
Would they feel upset if the real estate agent then promoted they paid above reserve? Would they feel angry? In some instances: yes!
Perhaps, you may consider that some buyers may actually take it this way; they may feel that their real estate agent publicly ridiculed them.
How buyers can turn
After their purchase, the agent probably walked over and shook their hand to congratulate them. The agent reassured them that they purchased a beautiful home, and they did great! After this, the buyers signed the contract and then walked out of the auction feeling elated. They just bought a property!
Then, next day, the buyers see the agent promoting the fact that they got the purchasers to pay a record price. The agents are telling everyone that the buyers paid a lot more than the owner was prepared to accept. The agent is effectively saying, “Ha ha,” the buyers paid too much and aren’t we fantastic! When an agent spruiks about their results, the only one that stands to benefit is the agent.
Handling the results
I am proposing that we treat buyers with more respect. After all, these same buyers will become sellers one day; do you want to risk upsetting them? Don’t get me wrong, you can still promote you sold the property; your brand can still benefit from the desired outcome… let’s just look at alternatives.
On the day you sold the property, why not ask your extremely happy vendor for a video testimonial? Ask THEM to sing your praises. Ask THEM to say that you sold the property over reserve. Ask them to say that they were ecstatic about the price. Having the seller saying how great you are is a very different scenario to you saying it.
It’s different because THEY are saying it. You can also ask the buyer to provide a testimonial about how much they love the house and the area. Make them feel great about their purchase.
Perhaps it’s not just the buyers that get upset?
An agent in the outer Western Suburbs of Sydney recently sold a property for close to a million dollars. He posted about the sale on his Facebook Page. He commented that many people advised he wouldn’t achieve the price he was aiming for. However, he did! And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Unfortunately, you only have to read a few of the comments to see just how upset the local residents became. They directed their annoyance towards the agent. The comments on this agent’s page weren’t from sellers of real estate, they were from residents upset at the prospect of not being about to afford property in the area.
The agent did nothing wrong, it was how the public reacted to the post. Some of the comments directed at the agents were just totally uncalled for and hurtful, with a substantial amount being deleted.
What do you think? Have you had an experience where buyers were upset with an agent promoting a sale over reserve? Should agents promote their sales this way?
Your Real Estate Coach On Demand
www.TheRealEstateHotline.com.au
1800-00-11-82