Presentation First:

You love your home and when it’s time to sell you want buyers to love it too. Here are a couple of tips to help showcase your home at its finest, without spending a fortune. It can be simple things like cleaning up the garden, lighting some candles during open homes and decluttering your house. Simplicity is the key.
Look at your space and find key features that you love. Is it the kitchen? Is it the backyard? Is it the lounge or family area? When you decide on what areas are your favourite, think about why those areas are your favourite. Is it the lighting, the flooring or a specific feature? Highlight this feature. Show it off to potential buyers coming into your home. You never know the thing you love about your home is exactly what they are looking for in their new home.
Presentation is key during an open home. That’s when its time for your house to shine. To put the best of your house on show its ideal to do these little things in the lead up to and on the day of an open home. Minimise items on spaces. You don’t want a bunch of items hiding the full potential of your home. Lighten it up. If you notice any lights that are out, get them changed, get the windows cleaned and open the blinds/curtains to let in as much natural light as possible. Smells can trigger feelings so light a candle during your open home or buy some flowers to place around the house.
It shouldn’t take a lot to get your home ready for sale but every little step will help to showcase it to incoming potential buyers.

Timing is key.

Like in life, when selling a house, timing is key. Timing can mean many different things both internally and externally. Internal factors being those that come from you and your family. External factors come from the outside world.
External factors can be easier to define and handle. Factors like:

• What the housing market is doing? Is it going up? Is it coming down? Has it plateaued?
• What are banks doing? Are banks changing the interest rates? Have banks changed how they are lending? Making it easier? Harder?
• Is it a buyer’s or seller’s market at the moment?
• Societal environments such as all these COVID19 lockdowns and the way that communities react to them.

Internal factors are so much harder to find and they can be a lot to handle as they tend to have such emotional ties to ourselves.

• Why are you selling? Is it a need or a want?
• Are you emotionally ready for the change?
• Is your family ready for the change?
• Is your health ready for one of the most stressful events in your life?

Emotional factor shouldn’t be brushed off for the sake of a sale. It’s not just a house, it’s a home. It’s where you have raised a family, made memories and spent a chunk of your life. If you or your family aren’t emotionally ready to sell then it might not be the right time just a that point, but that doesn’t mean it will never be the right time. You and your family need to take the time to be ready, to get the best out of the sale.
COVID has been such a crazy time for everyone and it has affected everyone differently. It also had a weird affect on the market. It has been up, it’s been down. There have been lockdowns and restrictions and regulations. It’s been so hard to keep everything straight and there is also that underlying fear of the unknown. We kept getting told that we are in “unprecedented times” and they really are. We want to protect ourselves and our families but we also want to protect our way of living. This affected the real estate market with people not wanting to leave the safety of their homes. Now with restrictions being lifted and life getting back to some sense of normalcy maybe the time is right for you.

Maximising Buyer Engagement

Buyer engagement is an integral part of selling a home. When shopping around for an agent it’s important to ask about their methods of achieving buyer engagement. A good agent will use as many tried and true methods as they possibly can.
The first point of call for most agents will be their own database of active buyers. These buyers will already have a connection and relationship with the agent. This way the agent can connect with them directly and will more likely to be able to find a group of matching buyers that are looking for a house just like yours.
Another method of buyer engagement is one we all know and use. Real estate website such as Domain.com and Realestate.com. These websites use 2 different methods to engage buyers to look at your house. They will use their own database, sending your house via email out to everyone who have been looking at homes matching yours. The other method is simply by using the general search traffic that go to these websites looking for houses to buy.
Print media is also used to engage buyers to look at your house. This can be in the form of brochures and flyers. Ask your agent to show you previously made brochures for other properties to make sure not only the quality is high but the agents style reflects how you see your property. A good sign to look for within these brochures is the quality of the photography. Is the lighting good? Does it show off each room of the house and the yard? Are aerial images included? These are all important things to ask and look for when choosing an agent as these are the factors that will help to maximise buyer engagement.
At the end of the day the more buyer engagement that an agent can achieve the better the outcome will be, as it can bring in more buyers, which is the best outcome for all.