The secret to real estate sales success in a buyer's market

In a buyer's market, many properties won't sell in the first 3 weeks. In fact, many listings will take 60, or even 90 days to sell. Some will take 6+ months!

During that time on market you and your vendors will overcome various challenges: crashed offers, building inspection issues, consent problems, lack of buyer interest, over-pricing.

Eventually, if you work hard enough, you will reach a point where your listing is priced at an attractive level, and potential selling hurdles have been dealt with or appropriately disclosed. Unfortunately, by the time you get to this point, all the buyers have disappeared. The initial rush of interest has subsided and the property has now been on the market so long that buyers think there must be something majorly wrong.

The challenge is, most salespeople don't have a strategy to overcome this lack of interest, aside from updating the price online and hoping for the best.

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In many cases, the exclusive period will expire and the owners will end up listing with another agent, only to sell within a few weeks on the market as they are now priced at the right level (thanks to you) and the fresh online listing has reintroduced the property to a new pool of buyers.

The secret to getting that sale yourself and earning the commission you deserve is to have a process to reintroduce your listing to the market throughout your marketing process.

The secret to success in a buyer's market: Having a process to reintroduce your listing to potential buyers.

When you secure a price reduction or major change to one of your listings, you need to be able to proactively notify:

• Every single previous visitor of that property, whether they liked it or not, via phone or text (and email).
• Every potential buyer who has visited a similarly priced property in the last 6 months, ideally via text.
• Every single person on your database, as part of your regular email newsletter.

This might happen 2, 3 or even 4 times throughout the marketing campaign. Keep at it until you secure a sale!

TIP: Ask your office to re-caravan the listing when you have a major price or motivation change to encourage more interest.

If you can do this regularly, you will sell more properties in a shorter period of time. You'll protect your vendor's price and avoid any potential of losing listings to your competition. Better still, being able to effectively demonstrate this process will help you secure more price reductions in the first place!

In a buyer's market, your database is an absolute goldmine. It's the key to increasing your income while properties are getting harder to sell, and while other agents are panicking, wondering where their next commission is going to come from.

Buyers change their minds

Why reintroduce the property to everyone who visited? Sometimes the buyer who visited in week 1 and said they weren't interested can become your key buyer a few weeks later.

People change their minds, become more aware of what they can buy for their money, adjust their budgets, or decide to change their non-negotiables. In any case, the smart approach is to presume every visitor is a possible buyer until your listing has sold.

Know your CRM

Any good database system should let you find all previous open home visitors and send them a text message or email. If you can't do this currently, talk to your IT support person, manager, or company trainer. If they can't give you an answer, consider moving to a real estate office that has appropriate tools to help you succeed.

At the very least, make sure you save all your open home registers so you can do this the old-fashioned manual way - by making phone calls!

SMS / Email Script Template

"Hi Andrew, you visited {ADDRESS} recently. I wanted to reach out and let you know that home has had a major price adjustment and is now available at {PRICE}. Could it be worth another look? Call me on {PHONE} to set up a time."

Tip: Add a hyperlink to the text if you can, and ideally a propertyfiles link so you can track who revisits the property info.

Related guides:

How to reconnect with your database

The key to unlocking a real estate business with consistent commission income is to build a machine that produces a steady stream of listing opportunities. That machine is your database combined with a regular communication strategy.

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How to encourage buyers to take action (1 key question to generate offers)

Offers = Action. In this market, any offer is like gold. Even the cheeky, low ones. They give you a reason to keep in touch with other buyers, a perception of social proof (other buyers like this house, too) and most importantly, offers keep your owners engaged in the process. No

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Agent Advice: How to get offers accepted.

A big part of our role is not only to bring offers to the table but to help owners understand what the market really thinks of their home, so they can make logical real estate decisions based on facts.

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