Present2Sell - By The Dart May 2009
Smart Sellers
Now the spring is here, reinvigorate your campaign to sell or rent your property with a few proactive strategies.
Buyers are definitely out there. All you have to do is provide enough good reasons for them to choose your property over others, and remove any reasons for them to pass you by or to make a low offer.
Objectivity is a key component to success, as is working closely with your agent to create that must-have desirability in your property.
Objectivity is the cornerstone to success because we very easily become rather blind to any environment that we spend significant time in, and therefore we don't see the flaws in it that others do. There's also a strange conflict in trading in property, particularly if it's a home, between the commercial, high-value aspect of the transaction that is set against the deeply embedded human need for security and privacy, as represented by home.
A reliable way to develop that objectivity is to email your agent's website to friends who both do and don't know your property to elicit their opinions about how your property is coming across. As web photos are such a critical portal these days, you absolutely must ensure that your website images effectively represent your property in the best possible light. You'd be amazed at how habitually ignored things such as unfinished DIY, unkempt or featureless gardens or rumpled bed covers can become a photograph's unwanted focal point. No decent agent will object to uploading new images if you need to re-shoot. If you do, give yourself plenty of time to check your shots until the room is as perfect as it can be. And then ask your friends again!
A reliable way to develop that objectivity is to email your agent's website to friends who both do and don't know your property to elicit their opinions about how your property is coming across. As web photos are such a critical portal these days, you absolutely must ensure that your website images effectively represent your property in the best possible light. You'd be amazed at how habitually ignored things such as unfinished DIY, unkempt or featureless gardens or rumpled bed covers can become a photograph's unwanted focal point.
No decent agent will object to uploading new images if you need to re-shoot. If you do, give yourself plenty of time to check your shots until the room is as perfect as it can be. And then ask your friends again!
If you haven't started to market your property yet, you'll want to take full advantage of the "interest spike", the heady rush of viewings that can happen in the first fortnight to properties that are fresh on the market. Work with your agent to find out all the details of when and how your property will be "launched" so you can prepare for that.
Are you keeping tabs on your property's website-traffic to check that you're getting the right level of "click-through" interest? Click-through is easily measured and so is a good gauge of the success of your web presence. If it's low, add some new images, especially if we're in a change of season. Check out tracking websites too, such as PropertySnake and download the PropertyBee toolbar from www.property-bee.com to see how the competition in your area has responded to the market - their changes may suggest improvements you too, can make.
Next time you have a viewing, ask your agent if the viewer is also selling a property and if so, see if you can get a look at it online. It's a good way to see which positive aspects of their property you could emulate, echo or enhance in yours.
Ensure you get detailed feedback after viewings. Good agents have the resources to elicit this, and the IT to retrieve it for you whenever you request it. Again, it's important to apply your objectivity to the feedback you get, and not allow negatives to dent your determination. Regard it purely as information that you can choose to either act upon or discard. If you don't want to respond to the feedback by making changes to the property yourself, (for example "I prefer an open-plan layout") get some builders' estimates and drawings done to show future viewers how that could be achieved. This example would also illustrate a defect in the details our viewer had been sent, providing us with another opportunity to improve the quality of our information.
