Competition is what creates the best price possible. And once you lose that, the momentum is gone, the buyers start looking at other properties- Yep ... and it can all go downhill, particularly if the market is not going up. Yeah. And at the moment we've got a sideways to slightly going down market, and it can really hurt you if you leave it more than two weeks

Welcome to the Selling Southport podcast. I'm Andrew Wright, principal of Professional Southport since 2008. Real estate isn't just my career, it's my passion. With decades of experience, I know what it takes to succeed in the property market, especially here in Southport. Whether you're looking to buy, sell, lease, or invest, you can count on me and my team to deliver strategies that maximize your returns.

Let's dive into today's episode and get you one step closer to your property goals

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Selling Southport. Now, if you're thinking of selling or you've recently put your property on the market, today's episode is a really important one for you because one of the biggest factors in your final result isn't the property itself, it's what happens in the first couple of weeks once it's hit the market, those first 14 days and why they are so critical.

You'll often hear agents talk about momentum, buyer activity, and early offers, but what does that all actually really mean? Today, I'm joined again by Andrew Wright from Professional Southport. Andrew, you've said to me many times that the first 14 days can actually make or break a sale. Why is that?

Look, I've got a really great example just from, from the last two weeks, and just coincides with this discussion.

So I listed a, um, townhouse in Southport in Queen Street just a few weeks ago. Two weeks ago, we did the first open home, had somewhere between 16 and 18, uh- Mm-hmm ... buyers through there, and I got three offers first weekend for that property. The property was marketed without a price, and we had offers there.

It's only a two-bedroom townhouse. Mm-hmm. 720, 725, 730,000. Now, in this particular case, the owner and I as the agent, we weren't quite sure what top dollar was, so we decided not to counter with those three buyers. We said, "Look, we need another weekend to do open homes." And I ended up making a mistake. I didn't force that owner to counter and, and do a deal straight away.

But last weekend we went to the second open home, and guess what? It was pouring down rain. One buyer turned up After that, I told the owner, "It's best that I go back to those three buyers and try and get a deal done before they're gone." And the highest of those three buyers said, "Oh, Andrew, we're already negotiating on another property."

I'm now waiting on buyers two and three, and the third one won't increase, and there's a maybe that the second one will increase, but I might not even get back to that, uh, 730 offer that we had the week before. Hmm. So it's so important to create competition. Competition is what creates the best price possible, and once you lose that, the momentum is gone, the buyers start looking at other properties- Yep

and it can all go downhill, particularly if the market is not going up. Yeah. And at the moment we've got a sideways to slightly going down market, and it can really hurt you if you leave it more than two weeks.

Yeah. Well, I mean, this whole episode is about that 14 days, but, uh, from what you've said there, even the first three, the first four, that first open home- Yeah

you know, um, especially in this market, move quickly, um, if you've got, if you've got competition, because that brings me to my, my second question. You know, when that property does first hit the, the, the market- Mm ... I don't think a lot of sellers are thinking what's actually happening from a, a buyer's perspective.

Can you talk me s- through, you know, what a buyer's thinking when they first see that property, that first, you know, day right through that first two weeks?

Yeah, Adam, I think it, it d- probably depends on the market, but certainly on the Gold Coast where there's a massive undersupply of property, most of the serious buyers that have got preapproval, a lot of them have probably already negotiated another property and missed out.

Yep.

And they're looking on the internet. They've got a little, uh, notification bell there. When a certain property comes up in their price range, they wanna be the one going to the first open home trying to take that property off the market and secure it.

Hmm.

And, uh, that's what's important to know. So it depends on the market.

Yeah.

Hmm.

But immed- you know, new listings get that immediate attention. Yeah. I mean, just looking at that example you just, you just gave-

Yeah ...

um, they will have looked at new properties in, in between for those three giving offers, and that's what's, um, made a couple of them, you know, go slightly, slightly cold.

Um-

Well, well that's exactly right. And who would've thought in this other example I just provided that we were expecting a heap of people to turn up in the second week before we lost momentum?

Hmm.

And just when the open home An hour beforehand it started pouring down rain and people just didn't turn up.

Yeah. Now, we've lost momentum with that marketing campaign now, and it's a real uphill battle-

Mm ...

to increase the momentum again. Yeah. We've got a budget coming up in a week's time and people sit on the sidelines.

Yeah. 'Cause serious buyers act early too, don't they? They wanna take it up to market. That's another-

Yeah, absolutely

another key point. So why do those first couple of, of weeks attract the most attention rather than, than later on?

Well, those buyers that have already missed out on other ones, typically, as I mentioned, they'll set up a, a little system on realestate.com or Domain where any new listings that meet their criteria will actually get sent to them.

Uh, they'll get an email saying, "Here's a new listing."

Yep.

Now, after a couple of weeks, unfortunately those new listings when buyers are doing a search, they start going to page three, four, five and page 10 of the internet, and they just don't get seen anymore.

Mm. So obviously they're at the top of the, top of the page- Yep

they're getting the most views. Serious buyers have been around for probably a while. I think a lot of owners don't think that the, the buyers are there. They've probably looked at dozens of properties over the last- Three weeks, six weeks, six months- Yeah ... missed out. Yeah. So serious buyers are ready to, to move, aren't they?

So, um, you know, 14 days and you've, you've missed the boat if you

haven't- Yeah, but you know, see the thing is, we, we can say, "Oh look, let's stretch it out like I did last week to that owner. Let's stretch it out for another week, see if we can get higher prices." But you don't know if there are two other similar properties coming on the market next week, and those two buyers you thought you had, they've, they've gone and negotiated on another property.

Which is exactly what happened to me last week. Yeah,

yeah. And in hindsight, without a price on that property- Mm ... and getting three offers all within 10 grand- Mm-hmm ... it probably does tell you that that is the market price for it right now- Absolutely ... there or thereabouts.

They're very, very close, uh- Mm ... in, in their offers.

That's right.

Yeah. What does a strong first couple of weeks really look like versus a, a not so strong first couple of weeks?

Look, if we can get, uh, 20 people plus to a short 30-minute open home, that's a, a strong result. And what you'll find is that the buyers go into these open homes, and if there's 20 people there, they're looking around and looking at the motions of the other buyers.

And, and, and some of them will even come up to me as an agent and say, "Well, that, that couple over there, they, they look pretty keen on this house." They look pretty keen,

yep.

Buyers just don't want to miss out. When you create that competition and the, the, there's that sort of emotion there, uh, you can p- see people sometimes even with their little, what do you call those measuring tapes when they're going in and measuring- Yeah

will the fridge fit in and all this sort of stuff. Yep, yep. And other buyers see what's going on. But if you price a property too high on the internet, if it's with a price and it's too high and we only get one or two people turn up, they don't get that emotion.

No.

The offers don't come, and they sit there and say, "Well, let's wait for this owner to drop his price.

Otherwise, we'll just go and have a look at another property."

Yeah. Well, we have done another couple of episodes on that pricing too high- Mm ... uh, mistake that, uh, that buyer's making. It's the one thing I've learnt through doing these podcasts with you. That's, that's probably the biggest mistake 'cause it fits in perfectly with what we're talking about today, that 14-day window.

Yeah. Tell me what happens. You, you missed that 14-day window. What, where, what are you left with then?

Well, as I mentioned before, there's a terminology in real estate that the listing goes stale, and what that means is it, it gets so far back on the pages that people don't see it.

Yep.

And buyers start to think, "Oh, there must be something wrong with that property."

If they haven't been to it, they might be sitting there saying, "Let's just wait a couple of weeks for the owner to drop the price, then we'll go and have a look at it." But in the meantime, new listings at a better price come up, and the best buyers go to the properties that are correctly priced.

Is there any way to get momentum back if you've missed it?

Look, one strategy some real estate agents will do, and I have done it in the past, is after a period of time where we've marketed a property with a price, if the price was too high initially, after a month or six weeks, sometimes we'll change the marketing strategy and we'll actually run an auction campaign.

Now, it's not ideal because we've already had a price on the property. Mm-hmm. But sometimes you can reinvigorate interest by changing the strategy, taking the price off the market. We go back to the market and say, "Hey look, this owner is now serious. We have an auction in three weeks' time," and we'll run a short three-week auction campaign.

Sometimes that can reinvigorate interest and creates the, um, the, uh, the feeling of this guy, this seller is now motivated.

Sure. Makes sense. All right, so let's sum up for, with the, the key takeaways here with the first 14 days, um, in mind. What are your key tips for, uh, for sellers thinking about going to, going to market with this in mind?

Make sure the property is priced correctly at the start. Make sure it is presented well for the first two weeks of open homes. In particular, if you have tenants in place, you need to make sure that those tenants are going to make sure that the property is very, very well presented, and we need to create competition and offers, multiple offers in the first couple of weeks of a campaign-

Yeah

before the marketing strategy goes stale.

Yeah. I absolutely love it, 'cause I don't think a lot of people ... You know, a lot of people who listen to this podcast, people don't buy and sell homes a lot in their life. No. Maybe two or three times for, for most people, and only in this little zone for it. So to know this kind of, um, information and how important, you know, that first 14 days is, is just such valuable, valuable thing to know.

So look, if you are, uh, listening to this podcast, um, watching us, please do share it with anyone you know who is, you know, in that process of looking to, to sell or, or is selling, just so they do know. Um, there's so many episodes on this, uh, on this podcast with, with information that is just so incredibly valuable.

Give Andrew a call at any time. He, you can find him at professionalsouthport.com.au. He's happy to answer any questions you've got. But look, thanks again for listening to, uh, to Selling Southport. If you are thinking about selling and you want to understand how to position your property, you know, for the best possible result from day one, and I'm gonna say to day 14, um, as you found out today, then Andrew is always happy to have that conversation.

So thanks again. Please give us a like, a share, subscribe so that you don't miss any other episodes and, uh, we'll see you on the, the next episode. Thanks again, Andrew. Thanks, Adam