A guest article from my friend and client James Bell from Brad Bell Real Estate.
I have many clients on both sides of this debate, but here’s James’ take.
Does your placement & position matter?
As the debate rages on about within our industry about recent market price changes on www.realestate.com.au I have firsthand last weekend experienced a situation that has sealed my decision about the use of this website.
Some background, I received a phone call Monday 30th June 2014 from an owner whom had only two weeks earlier advised me that they were choosing another agent to market their property. They informed me they were not happy with their choice for a number of reasons that are not important and asked if I would take it on. The circumstances were such that our owners had signed a contract on another house and really required an immediate sale. We went live on Tuesday and were under contract that night through a buyer on our database.
We still however went ahead with the open home on Saturday. We had a total of 12 groups attend the open home on Saturday. What I was absolutely stunned by was 4 buyers were really upset that the property had gone under contract and they had missed out. When I mentioned that it had been on the market for 2 weeks prior they were kicking themselves even more. Now, these are all buyers who are actively looking and have been for some time now but more to the point had been looking for the past month intensely. They hadn’t seen the property, all were looking in the $400,000-$500,000 price range.
When they were asked where they are looking for their properties all said www.realestate.com.au. The difference between the two campaigns were one was a highlight placement the other was a feature placement. SO at the end of the day was it the positioning of the highlight being higher in the pecking order or was it the laziness of buyers to not search every page? Either way it doesn’t matter because there are now 4 genuine buyers that are now hoping the contract falls over so they can now have a crack.
So its not about profile or agents as many are suggesting. Here is a clear example of where placement and position works. If it was one buyer you can say maybe it was just this once off but if 33% of the groups through last Saturday had seen the property in the first two weeks I wouldn’t be writing this blog……..
James Bell
Brad Bell Real Estate
