When selling your home or investment property, there are typically 2 main costs (aside from taxes and conveyacing) to be aware of – the commission payable to your real estate agent for the successful sale, and the advertising that helps get it sold.
Commission rates and what is fair in what market we will leave for today as that’s a column (or two) all of its own, but the advertising component of a sale is one area that can have an enormous impact on the end result, and its an area that is often completely in the control of you as the seller.
You can’t sell a secret. Sounds silly doesn’t it? A bit of marketing alliteration designed to line the pockets of advertising companies whether you’re Coke, Ford or the little dress shop on the corner. For all that though, it IS generally right – you can have the best product (home) in the world, and the best salesperson ready to negotiate, but if nobody knows that something is for sale then its pretty hard to sell it! At least for the right price.
The way we advertise has changed hugely over time, particularly in the past 5 years as we’ve navigated COVID, social distancing and inspection by video. Where the flyer in an agency window, sign at the front of the house and glossy print advert used to be the beginning and the end of your marketing efforts before the core online portals took off, you’re now just as likely to come across a property for the first time on Facebook or Instagram as you are on realestate.com.au or the weekend paper.
With free options like Facebook Marketplace or Gumtree so prevalent though, it can be easy to fall into the trap of relying on free or cheap options to save money on a sale. Limiting yourself to a single advertising avenue limits your potential buyer pool to the audience on that single platform – and while you might see high numbers in that audience (Facebook is what, 1B and counting?) they might not be the right audience for you. The buyer looking for a cheap lounge or 2nd hand lawn mower is probably not the right one for your $600,000 house in Brinsmead.
Sometimes you’ll luck out, and word of mouth is enough to sell a home, but I look at it this way – I’d rather spend a little I didn’t need to, to know I got the right result, than not spend it and worry about the lot that I missed out on.