Everyone wants to pay as little as possible to sell their home while ensuring they are maximising the sale price. The cheapest agent is not necessarily the best agent for your property, similarly, the most expensive agent may not be the best agent for your either. You need to choose an agent you can trust.

A good agent performs regular open homes, ensures the best marking is used, doesn’t over or under value your property, keeps you updated on where you are up to with the sales process and developed a sales strategy specific to your property.

Online valuations work by using algorithms. While these may be great and accurate for your run-of-themill property, they lack the ability to factor in the biggest thing that makes people buy houses; emotion.

This means that two properties that seem similar to the valuation website can be very different in person.

While online valuations may provide a guide, you should always seek advice from local, professional real estate agent/s.

Many sellers try and maximise their sale price by setting it too high at the start. Their thinking is that they can always lower it later, but it will give them a chance at getting the big bucks first. In reality, the serious buyers (the ones who have been in the market for some time and are financially ready) have an excellent understanding of market value and will move on to other properties.

If your property if listed at a reasonable market value it will draw out these buyers and create competition between them, believing that it is ‘the one’ and a ‘must-have’. This competition means you will most likely end up with as much or more than you would have if you had set the initial price higher, while reducing your time on market.

A buyer generally knows the market much better than a seller- they troll open homes and online listings deliberately trying to remove any emotional connections to the properties. Your agent should collect buyer feedback and this should be based on what real people would pay for your property right now. You should look at the feedback as a whole, not one independent opinion.

Too often home owners say that they will have to wait until the market picks up before they can sell, as they can’t afford to do it in the current market. Unfortunately, too often these very people have to sell three or six months later, in a worse market than when they first considered selling.

The market is not predictable. With the pillars of the economy in Townsville (E.g. mining) being unsteady, the market can turn in a heartbeat based on good/bad reports from the sector.

Any decent agent should be able to tell you approximately what your property is worth right now, however trying to speculate what is will be worth in the future in nothing but conjecture.

Unless you know exactly who will be buying your house, you can’t try and adjust it to their taste. Don’t go overboard trying to make it appeal to a certain type of person because the more you do, the more you alienate every other buyer out there. Instead, decorate the property in a neutral, non-offensive way, leaving space for the buyers to put their own touch on it if they so wish. Keep personal items on display such as photos etc. to a minimum as you don’t want buyers to be visualising you living there, you want them to be able to imagine themselves living in the house to create an emotional bond.

Greatest emphasis needs to be placed on areas where the property excels. Ensure that the eye of the buyer is drawn to these aspects.

If it has a great outdoor area, this needs to be emphasised, make sure there’s comfortable seating, mosquito coils if needed and even bottled water.

If the property has an area that needs attention, that’s ok, so does almost every other house out there.

When buyers get an offer in the first week or so on the market, they assume that this is just the start and more offers will follow. In their mind, if this person is willing to pay this much right now, soon someone will come along and offer more and therefore don’t seriously consider it. In truth, generally the people who make these first offers are ones who have missed out on properties before and have their finances sorted. They don’t want to miss out again and therefore are willing to offer more right now to secure the property. It is very important to work with these buyers as this will increase your profit.

Without any marketing, nobody will know your property is for sale. Without the right marketing, the right people won’t be coming through your home. With the right marketing, the right people will be there, and will want to buy it. Targeted marketing ensures you dollars are spent reaching the right buyers.

A good agent will inspect your home, and develop a tailor-made marketing strategy that uses each of these aspects to their full potential. Remember, cheap marketing isn’t good and good marketing isn’t cheap! A good agent will be able to explain why they market the way they do and don’t just use the same
marketing on every property.