At first it sounds like a good idea – sell your home by approaching a local real estate agent, ask them to speak to buyers on their list rather than going public with the sale, and sell the home quietly without all the hassle. And it can work:
NSW Real Estate Institute chief executive Tim McKibbin has come across properties that have sold almost the first day the sellers have said they’re ready to sell.
So why would someone want to go through the trouble of a full real estate marketing campaign, open homes, having to clean everything and have the home presented perfectly over and over again, lots of agents and buyers wandering through at night and on weekends? Not to mention the lack of privacy, which is a big factor for some people.
[soliloquy id=”768″]It’s easy enough to understand why someone would sell their home quietly:
The shortage of stock around … can make it very tempting for vendors to put a toe in the market with a call to agents to test the water, and then accept an offer without going to the expense of a full campaign, with professional photography, advertising, website listings, signage and an auction.
Is it a good idea to sell your home ‘under the radar’, as a bit of a secret?
It can be very appealing, but it comes at a cost, with one buyers’ agent suggesting that homeowners who sell “off-market” are missing out on up to 10 per cent of their property’s true value.
If you can afford to miss out on 10% then maybe it works for you, and of course we will never know exactly how much is being missed out on when a home is sold “off-market” because we don’t have anything to compare it to.
But let’s think about it to see if it seems plausible that a home will sell for less when sold off-market …
The value of a home is determined by what someone is willing to pay for it. One person might say it has a value of $200,000, but another person might be prepared to pay $230,000. Neither person is right or wrong, it’s just a matter of what they are willing to pay for that particular property. However, if you’re selling, you probably want to be finding the people who are prepared to pay the higher amount, rather than the lower amount.
How do you find the most buyers for your house?
You do it by making your home as appealing as possible to as many people as possible. That’s why a top quality real estate agent will prepare a full marketing campaign, including “professional photography, advertising, website listings” and more.
In other words, you want competition. In fact, not just competition, you want people fighting over your home because of the value it presents. How do you get to that? Well, you don’t get there by whispering to a small number of potential buyers.
You get a crowd flocking to your home by going big, and having high quality professional photography will always feature in a list of “must do” activities for any agent.