How shifting economic landscapes are affecting how we need to approach our selling processes

All of the stuff above is creating not one, but several different reactions in buyers, and a big challenge for agents is that we can’t do our standard labelling of the market, i.e. we can’t call it either a buyer’s market nor a seller’s market because of the inherently random nature of results on the front line.

What has that created? Lots of buyers sitting on the fence, a big stack of confusion in best strategies, and a whole load of second-guessing as to what may happen to the fortunes of home owners trying to sell. It’s like the Melbourne weather – we see four seasons in a day, and right now we’re seeing multiple markets each week!

So with little logic really defining the market movements, we need to focus on what we can control, and increase the probability of getting a solid outcome by mitigating the risk of doubt in the value of each property that we’re representing.

1) We need to do something to get these buyers off of the fence!

I’m hearing a lot of agents saying that they “just don’t know what’s going on”, scratching their heads in disbelief that properties aren’t being sold. There are growing amounts of certain property types on the market as well, and so when buyers have a few more to choose from, their urgency to buy is quashed because they have options.

When there’s confusion in the market, and buyers hovering around doing nothing, we have to simplify our thinking to basic fundamentals around why properties don’t sell, i.e. the price is too high, or the marketing isn’t right, or both, and look at our options one by one.

If you’re going with a private sale, then you know that the only real play that you have to create urgency is its pricing in relation to other properties of a similar level. However, you’ve also got to make sure that there are no gaps in your marketing as well – and a lot of properties are lacking in video content recently which has been proven to assist in improving the chances of a sale.

Switching to a time-based campaign (auction, set date) is your other option, but whichever way you look at it, you need to do something different to the others to give yourself a shot of having buyers showing some form of preferential interest on your listing.

But aside from going to auction, it may be worth considering drilling down into more specific buyer demographics by pushing certain elements of the property and trying to strike certain buyers in their “feels”. For example, if the property has a home-based salon fitted out, it’d be worth pushing the image of the salon across Facebook with a cross-section of those that have interests in beauty and makeup, as well as those looking on REA so that you get to drill down on buyers that have those specific needs. On top of your standard advertising, this should be a play that helps to find those buyers that will move for the right thing.

2) Open every possible window of opportunity.

I’ve seen a bit of laziness creep into some agents with respect to the resources available to them, with regards to how and where they’re representing properties.

Throwing it onto realestate.com.au and waiting for the money to roll in isn’t going to cut it! Even if obtaining marketing money from sellers is a challenge, we have so much more availability to push our listings towards relevant buyer audiences. For example, proportionally speaking there are very few videos going up online which are proven to increase buyer traffic, and the rate that reels are whizzing around the socials right now makes it quite baffling to not have one for every single property on your books.

We have more tools these days, and more avenues to get in front of buyers than we ever have had, so it stands to reason that we should be exploring every single one of them!

3) Get second opinions from colleagues and trusted voices.

If a property isn’t moving, we can get in our own way sometimes by overthinking the situation, so getting second opinions can often lead to a much greater clarity in our thinking around particular listings that we are having trouble with.

It’s not necessarily the agent’s fault either! We’ve all been in those positions where we’re too close to the action to be able to see the big picture, and frustration clouds judgement, so it’s understandable sometimes to not recognise potential solutions that are right in front of us.

It’s times like now that we really do need to remove our egos from the equation. It’s such an easy trap to fall into (stop kidding yourselves, we all do it!), but right now the ability to keep your business moving forward very much depends on your comfort around accepting that you might not have all the answers within the confines of your own head.

4) Speed to adapt starts with preparation.

Each week tends to throw us a slightly different problem to solve, and the unpredictability at the coalface means that we can’t really head into the weekend’s action with a tremendous amount of certainty, irrespective of how good our follow up work is. Yes, our sellers are looking to us for guidance and clarity, but to tell them that something “is going to happen” right now is a recipe for egg on your face and lost credibility.

So not only do we need to make sure that we have all of our bases covered operationally, but we need to take more time to articulate clearly to our sellers that we have their best interests looked after should any scenario materialise.

This isn’t a case of being pessimistic; it’s the only way of showing your clients that you have total control over what you can control, which is the only thing they’re looking for beyond the result anyway irrespective of the strength of your campaign. Being thorough with your preparation, as well as communicating that to your sellers (because a lot of the time we do it without telling the one person who needs to hear it, i.e. the client!), then ultimately means that whatever the outcome may be, you’ve got the plan to keep the client moving closer towards their end goal.

Andy Reid is an auctioneer, podcast host, coach and speaker.