Property presentation is one of the most important aspects of selling a home. Tracey Dixon from McGrath returns to the series to give her tips to presenting your property right.
Like our videos? Don’t forget to subscribe to our Proptech Carpool series here.
Here’s the transcript of the video:
What tips do you have for vendors that are wanting to, I guess, come to market but then present their properties. Is there like a checklist or something that you would advise them to do, a styling or whatever that may be? Yeah. I think there's three things: pricing, presentation and marketing of the home are the big three for me. The price the agent works out with the owner in an honest way, the presentation, super important as well. A lot of us live in our homes for many, many years and, you know, we enjoy it but we don't really do anything, you know, you don't live in your home like you should sell it. And I think that people underestimate the value, or the emotional value for buyers, of making the home presented in a way that it can appeal to a wide audience. So, you know, we usually say, decluttering, painting, maintenance and styling to a way that's going to really appeal to who your target market are. So if you've got an old home and you've been there a long time and you want to appeal to younger families, we need to give that vibe. And that's why, you know, the styling companies are doing so well and that everybody's watching, you know, all the TV shows around it because it does work. It's not just a fallacy, you know, so I think presentation, you know, start three months before you want to sell to really get some good advice around that, and then of course marketing the home to, you know, some really great sources; social media, print media, not just internet these days. We need to try and grab those buyers that are perhaps not thinking, you know, particular suburbs. So yeah, so I think those three things really combine to give the vendor a huge advantage when they're coming on the market, because they are in competition with every other house, you know, they're not just on the market themselves. So, I think they should get around and have a look at other properties that are going to be in competition with them as well. - Just on competition and styling. I guess, is styling more important now, given that, I guess, the market’s probably down a little bit, where three or four years ago, the market’s booming and everybody's kind of buying and selling. Do you feel like now, styling is more important than ever before? - I think it is. I think you get one opportunity to showcase your property to the market. We know through our statistics, you know, looking at how people look at properties on social media, or on the web, that the first two weeks that's presented to the market is when you get all of your audience. So if the photos don't look good, if the house is not looking good, if it's an empty shell on the internet, it's just not going to have the same amount of response or buyer activity than a home that is looking amazing and presented well with styled furniture, etc. I'm sort of all in favor of doing not a whole, we don't want houses to look like showrooms anymore. We want them to look like a home. - Yeah. But, you know, people are, the stylists are incredibly clever at making the home really appeal to the target market. So, you know, I think that people need to pay particular attention to that to make sure that they are looking good against their opposition. - Yeah sure. - Because I mean, really, the facts are that there might be 15 serious buyers in every price point and there maybe 15 homes on the market. - Sure. So we're kind of vying for, might be 30, so that we're vying for that buyout dollar and just one or two things can make people go, ”Oh look, you know, that's all too hard. We won't have time to paint or carpet before we move in” or, you know, ”We can't get our head around the age of the home with this furniture in it.” You know, unfortunately our buyers are, they want fast, you know, they want fast gratification and I think if they walk in and see it, they can visualize themselves in the home so much more easily if the presentation’s, kind of, right up there. - Yeah. Good point. - Yeah.
