"penny wise pound foolish"

Due to the slowing nature of the Perth residential property market sellers maybe tempted to consider private sale rather than engaging the services of a real estate agent. Cost saving is probably the principle motivation for such a decision.

Sellers may see this as a smart option to reduce the cost of marketing their property and avoid paying a selling fee to a real estate agent. However experience has shown that this is false economy. By entering into a private sale, sellers generally harm themselves in respect of the sale result.

Sellers may see it as an easy task to put a for sale sign on the property and place an advertisement in the newspaper. Experience has shown, however, that the buyer of today is a very different creature to that of the past. The methods of communication are far more diverse and buyers are generally much more informed prior to making enquiries about a property.

By decreasing the extent of buyer exposure in the market place sellers in effect reduce the number of buyers attracted to their property and also dilute the focus of buyers. This combines to reduce buyer competition for the seller's property. Buyer competition is all about generating a better sale price for the property.

New consumer
Accordingly it is important that a marketing campaign be assembled to create market impact around the property and generally this can only be done through the extensive resources offered by a progressive real estate agency. In particular, marketing not only via the internet but also b direct presentation to a buyer database is probably one of the most beneficial ways of focusing buyer attention to a seller's property.

Another consideration is that sellers do not have the expertise to apply the different selling methods employed in today's real estate market. Historically Perth sellers have became overly familiar with the private treaty sale with set asking price method, however, this is not necessarily the best method to employ especially in the current market conditions. Furthermore over the course of a property being on the market various different marketing and selling methods can be employed by a professional real estate agent for the benefit of the seller.

Having yourself as the client
The other failure of the private sale comes from the sale negotiations. When sellers negotiate directly with a buyer they are more likely to agree to the buyer's terms, because they do not have the advantage of an independent and impartial person standing between themselves and the buyer to negotiate the best seller result.

So, as a seller it's smarter for you to choose a real estate agency and take full advantage of all it can offer, so you get a better sales result because it will be worth the investment...a few $1000 in commission and marketing can deliver tens of $1000's in sale price!

Watch those days on market

When a property market slows (as it is occurring now in various sectors of the Perth property market), both real estate agents and sellers adopt an attitude that it will simply take longer to get a result.

When a property market slows it is important for a seller to seek a result within good time because the longer the property is on the market it is increasingly less likely to attract the seller's price expectation.

Why?...because prices are falling rather than rising and also because buyer interest will be diluted the longer the property is on the market, especially with increased buyer choice continuing to enter the market weekly. The result is the seller often finds itself chasing the market (price) down!.

Put more simple, a longer time on market means a decreasing opportunity for a premium price.

Unfortunately, most real estate agents adopt a mindset that this "is just the market" and therefore ask for longer and longer listing periods to give them more time to let the market slowly "condition the seller". This in tern creates a mindset in both the agent and the seller that
it's going to take 80, 90, 120, 180 days or longer to get a result, rather than keeping a focus on trying to achieve the sale within the optimum 30 day selling period whilst the property is fresh to the market and buyer interest most acute.

In these circumstances sellers should consider only issuing real estate agents a tight selling appointment period of say not more than 45-60 days to keep the agent focused on achieving a result for the seller in the time period that is optimum for them in the current market conditions.