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The text book real estate ‘101’ answer to this is “if you take your car into the garage, you wouldn’t expect them to pay for your parts if they weren’t paid for their labour” and although a bit cheesy, the truth is we cannot afford to pay for all your marketing because if the property doesn’t sell or is withdrawn, we are out of pocket and won’t be paid back for all our time and fuel etc.
Marketing is a proven investment, you don’t need to be silly about it, but I would much rather have four or five buyers to work and negotiate with, rather than one buyer calling the shots.
Remember the old saying: “You can’t Sell A Secret”!
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Commission… This is always the hard question, but the truth is, as we are not selling residential there is no black and white answer. It depends on the value of the property, location, agency type etc the rate varies across the industry from as low at 1.5% up to +4 % up in Auckland. We also sometimes offer a fixed fee.
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Again another question without a straight answer... if we know there is going to be strong interest in a property then a Tender/Deadline or Auction can be a great way to get a premium price for your property. The other time these methods are very useful is in a situation where it is very hard to put the exact price on a property as a property is worth what a buyer is willing to pay, and there wouldn’t be much worse than under selling your property. In some cases, we have a really good understanding on where the price level sits and, in this case, it is good to advertise a price. This can either be done by an asking price that will be negotiated down from, or sometimes you can show your hand a bit more and use “offers over” or a similar strategy where you are effectively showing your bottom dollar and hoping we can create competition and negotiate upwards of this number. The method is very important, but it is more important to have an agent that you can trust and that is proven, while doing the tough negotiating on your behalf as this is where it can make a real difference.
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When it comes to talking with the neighbours first, we see this very often, and the fact that we see it shows that 9 times out of ten it doesn’t work….. or they would have sold.
The fact is the main reason a buyer tries to buy privately is because they don’t want to compete with other buyers and they really want to get the property for the lowest possible price. Also, there is certainly a high level of discomfort on both sides when negotiating as often you know each other and or are friends and no one wants to upset anyone which is where a middleman (me) comes in a mediates and steers the negotiations. However if they are keen and we know they are, or there is multiple interest from “private” parties, the vendors think they can do it themselves but the truth is that is when you need an agent most, and when we can add the most value by creating fair and even competition, plus if you know a few potential interested buyers there will be more that you don’t know about.
As far as selling privately anyone can get professional photos done and put a property on line, but there are plenty of places that private buyers can’t advertise and there are proven stats that show that it is best to buy privately as you will get a bargain 9/10…. Often people try and sell privately and if it doesn’t or when it doesn’t sell then come to an agent, but then the property has lost its edge and doesn’t have the same impact when it first hits the market. Also, some potential buyers that have looked privately and dismissed the property could have been the buyer if a skilful agent handled them from day one, answered questions and came up with solutions to their problems and or negotiated as a third party.
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It Is always a bit hard to know how much you should be doing in the lead up to selling you property. As a general rule, declutter as much as you can, when you move everything has to go so you may as well get rid of as much as you can early on to present the property better to the market, and increase your sale price. Anything that is a cheap fix, or cheap improvement is normally worth doing like water blasting, painting, small repairs, hanging gates properly, straining the fences, fixing the potholes etc. Other things like cutting lawns, weeding flower beds etc is just common sense that it won’t cost anything apart from some sweat so get stuck into it as it will make the property look a whole lot better. There are exceptions where a large expense like a kitchen may be worth doing but that is when you need to consult with a professional real estate agent as you may just put money into something that they buyer won’t want and therefore you may as well kiss that money goodbye.
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When we list your property the more information we can provide to buyers, basically the easier it will be for them to buy it. We want to make your property very simple to buy.
We like to give purchasers LIM reports which we will organise for you. What we will require from you are soil tests, fertiliser plans, paddock maps, stocking rates, production history, any building information you have for houses, sheds, dairy sheds, Fonterra information like effluent inspection reports…. Also have info ready like annual rainfall, GST number, TB status, number of paddocks, stocking rates… and so on.
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Anyone who tells you an answer to this is a liar! I have sold Dairy farms in two days of listing, and other properties, I have had on the books for 2+ years…. The truth is it really depends on the property and market, but pick an agent that you are willing to go the distance with as it can take some time with rural property, and there is unfortunately no silver bullet except selling it for cheap…
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Basically, we will come out and do a pre appraisal visit which is a chance to meet with the owners and have a really good look around the property and get our heads around their personal situation as every sale is different. We then return with a detailed and thorough appraisal on the property with comparative sales, our thoughts, commission rates, marketing and so on. After this if you are happy to proceed, we will come out again and go through the listing agreement with you and start the ball rolling and get the paperwork and AML (Anti-money laundering paperwork) done. We then will organise professional photos and the video of the property and start gathering all the information we require to formulate a detailed information memorandum (fancy brochure). We will work on a script for your property and then will send through the photos, video and script for your approval and then we need to start booking advertising, then we can get the property up online. Obviously, this is the shortened version of what goes on behind the scenes but there is a lot of work to be done before we are ready to launch your property.
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This is a question we quite often come across and it does depend on the property and your situation, but as a general rule if you are selling your property subject to being able to find another property we would have to advice buyers of this and nine times out of ten this will stop them putting too much commitment into your property as it isn’t 100% for sale, and even if they want it to happen it can sometimes not work out. For this reason, I would say usually find what you want to move to first and then look at selling yours or making an offer subject to the sale of your property.
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One tip is if you do get a valuation done don’t tell the agent too early what the property is valued at, as our appraisal should be based on our knowledge and comparative sales and there is no point in us even doing an appraisal if we are just going to write down what the valuations states, or what you want for the property. Our appraisal should tell you honestly, like it or not sometimes what we think your property would be worth in the current market. It can be very useful to have a valuation done if you happy to disclose it to buyers to justify your asking price, but if for nothing else a valuation can give you peace of mind that you are not under selling your property.
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Harcourts are in 10 different countries, under the name of Harcourts (NZ Owned), not just some arrangement to join up different brands to be able to say we advertise widely. We are all on the same data base/computer system, so when listing with us, sales agents all over NZ and the world have access to your property and the relevant information and it will come up in their buyer from their database searches.
The answer is definitely yes, we have the biggest and best platform to get your property out to the whole of NZ, as well as the rest of the world when needed/required.
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Harcourts is the biggest residential Real Estate firm in NZ and they market a large amount of lifestyle properties. Harcourts do have a large rural team around the county and our rural side of the business is growing. In recent studies Harcourts are the leading real estate company in terms of rural and lifestyle listings nationally.
Locally, we are very strong in the rural space and last time we looked at the stats we had just over 20% market share in the rural sector in Nelson/Tasman, which when you take into account how many companies are in the market, we are really holding our heads high!
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Anti-Money Laundering came into effect for the entire real estate industry in January 2019 and is now a legal requirement for us to do. There are different levels of AML required depending if the ownership is an individual, company or trust etc but the basics of it is we need to ensure the owners are who they say they are by sourcing identification and proof of address, and some situations will require a proof of wealth. We have an in-house AML compliance officer who keeps this as simple and stress free as it can be, but there is no getting away from it. For more information click the link below.
https://www.realestate.co.nz/blog/news/what-real-estate-agents-need-know-about-aml
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Should we get a lawyer to look over our offer or Sale and Purchase Agreement first before signing? This really depends on how complex the Sale & Purchase agreement is, but usually we would say this would be best practice and otherwise we would always recommend that we make the contract subject to your solicitors’ approval.
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Really, you are on my page and you have to ask that question. Come on…