Strategic Sale Part 2: How to Sell Your Home for More in a Falling Market

Today, I'm going into part two of my strategic sale, where I'm going to look at demand pricing, creating competition and expert negotiation. When you're selling a property, it's very easy to focus on one number. What's my property worth? But I think there's actually a more important question, which is, how do you create the conditions for buyers to pay, the very best price the market is prepared to pay? Because they're not necessarily the same thing. In part one of my spring selling strategy, I took you through the first three parts of my six point strategic sale. We went into strategic timing, a motive presentation, and the trifecta of marketing that I use. Welcome to Perth Property Insider, where you will learn how to grow your wealth and improve your life using Perth Property. A show was brought to you by investors' edge real estate, the highly rated and award-winning property management, sales, and buyers' agency, servicing the whole of Perth. Now, here's your host, Jared Mann. Good day, and welcome to Perth Property Insider. I'm your host, Jared Mann. So today, I want to complete the framework with the final three, which is demand pricing, creating buyer competition and expert negotiation. And what I really want to show is that these aren't six separate things that we just randomly do. They build on one another, and when we start to look at how they're interrelated, timing affects the competition, presentation affects how buyers feel, marketing determines how many buyers we reach, pricing determines how many of those buyers actually engage, and then competition changes, the buyer behavior once we've got them along to the home open once we've started to engage with them. And negotiation is where all of that work hopefully turns into the strongest possible result. So if we're presenting the property poorly, if we've got our timing wrong, our pricing wrong, we never get a chance to even see buyers at the home open or our viewings, and it's going to be pretty hard to create competition and negotiate from there. So the first three things set us up for a strong three to get the best price possible. And sometimes, particularly in the market we're in now, one part of the strategy has to be traded off against another. I'm going to go into some of those trade-offs today because things are very different now compared to six months ago. So let's do a quick recap on the first three parts because I want to add a few subtle differences as to what's working now in the current market. And then we'll go into the final three. So strategic timing is the first part, and that isn't simply what's the best month of the year to sell. You need to look at the owner's situation, your situation if you're the one that's thinking about selling. Why are you selling? What needs to happen next? And if it's an investment property, when does the tenant lease end? Can that timing be brought forward by negotiating with the tenant, offering compensation and coming to an agreement? And what is happening in the market while all of this is taking place? And then the second part to my strategy is having a motive presentation. That's where buyers don't make decisions purely from spreadsheets and comparable sales. They walk into a home and they respond emotionally, even investors buy with emotion. They were all humans. So I'm looking carefully at things such as the paint, the flooring, the gardens, decluttering. Minor repairs, the first impressions that draw people in from the curb to the front door, get them feeling good about the place. And then professional staging, where the tenant might not be presenting that well or when the property's vacant, definitely worth using that. So the objective isn't to renovate unnecessarily. It's to identify where spending money is likely to create that worthwhile return. And I'm really looking for $2, $3, $4 back from every dollar we spend. And for some cosmetic improvements, I might be looking for the potential to create even more than that. And just remove the negatives that buyers are going to have when seeing the property that might hold them back from moving forward and making it offer. And especially in this market, buyers are even more fussy. They're even more selective because there's a lot more properties to choose from and everyone is dialing up their presentation and it needs, so that's what we need to be on point if possible. Now, the third point of my strategic sale was my trifector of marketing. And that's where we create. We use strong, traditional online marketing. We use targeted social media advertising and third my database and the buyer network that I've been building for nearly two decades. And the objective is simple. Don't just put the property online and hope that the right buyer finds it. Put it in front of as many of the right buyers as possible at the beginning of the campaign so we can dance all the interest together. And that creates the foundation for the final three parts that I'm going to go into. In this market, we really need to use the very best of marketing to remain fresher for longer and be found by more buyers, especially when there aren't as many looking. So this definite trade-offs and the biggest one I'm seeing in the market at the moment is timing versus presentation. So before getting into demand pricing, I want to revisit strategic timing because the current market is creating a really interesting trade-off. Normally, if I've got an investment property where the tenant isn't presenting it particularly well, my preference would be fairly straightforward. I'd look to get vacant possession, I'd improve the presentation, potentially paint, fix the gardens, maybe some new carpets, replace the flooring, stage the property, have it really looking amazing, sell the whole lifestyle of the property, then we'd photograph and market it, looking at it at it absolute best. And on the right property, that better presentation might potentially add 30 to 40,000 in this market, previously when we had buyers getting even more emotional with prices. Gee, it could be adding 50, 100, even more in many cases. There's some properties previously I sold for 200, 300,000 above asking price when we got people super emotional about it. So on the surface, waiting until the tenant moves out, doing these things sounds like the obvious decision. But that's only looking at one side of the equation because at the rate that things are going down in the market at the moment, what happens if the market moves further, which it's likely to while you wait? Prices have been adjusting down from the levels that we reached in March. So imagine waiting another two months to get vacant position and that perfect presentation, and you might create another 40,000 of value through a better presentation, but if the market moves backwards by 40,000 during those two months, that gain has effectively been canceled out. And after holding costs and the money spent preparing the property, staging the property, having the property vacant, the seller can actually be worse off. So that's where the tradeoff becomes important. Do you want the perfectly presented property two months from now? Or are you better off getting the property sold in today's market? And there's no universal answer to that. That's why we're why I call it strategic timing. What I'm doing right now is that I'm probably going to be negotiating one or two compensation agreements with tenants every week. That conversation at the moment is essentially going to the tenants and asking them, would they consider ending their tenancy earlier if the owner offers some compensation towards moving out? And that's typically $800 to $1,000, typically $1,000, the cost of moving these days has gone up. So that's going to help with removerless cleaning. If they wait three, four, six months until the lease officially ends, then they're not going to get that compensation. So that is really going to help them come to terms with that. If there's an extenuating circumstances on the seller's side, I'd usually get permission to share that. To get the tenant a bit more on board with trying to come to terms with moving. So that's a way that we can bring forward the sale, potentially vacate the tenant, still get our presentation the way that we want. And if the tenant's going to have to move out anyway in three or four months, because we've probably been a sell to a home buyer in most cases now, then they may as well get some help to do that with having some money towards their moving costs. So it's a bit of a win-win for everyone. There's no one likes having their property sold, but finding that tenants are open to agreeing to this more and more at the moment, especially if we then go and help them with the move and let them know what other rental properties we've got available and coming up and really make that a more smooth transition for them. So the important part is thinking through the trade-offs rather than automatically assuming that one option is always right. And at the moment, in general, bringing things forward and doing things sooner is gonna get a better overall result because the market is going down 10,000 or so per month, most price points besides the lower end, which is holding up very well. So now let's go into demand pricing, which is the fourth element of my strategic sale. And I think this is one of the most misunderstood parts of selling because let's say the owner wants 9.40. Previously, we could probably put it on it from 9.40, get a whole bunch of people still that would come to the home open. If we were overpricing the property, the market was a lot more forgiving. It might have been the case that recently sold comparable properties between 9.930 and every owner wants to get the very best price possible. And that's what I'm here to do. So rightly, they might want 940, they might think that their place is a bit better, as every owner does than the other ones that have sold in that range. And the temptation is obvious because people think I want 940, so let's ask 940 from 940, see what happens. And the problem is that asking 940 almost guarantees that you're not going to get the very top of that recent price range, particularly when there are now properties competing for buyers, there's a lot more out there to choose from. And the market may have cooled further since those comparable sales occurred. The alternative is to price the property to create demand. So depending on what similar properties are currently asking, I would typically be looking to come on to the market with something more like from 899,000. And that doesn't mean the properties only worth 899, and it doesn't mean the seller has to accept the first offer at that level without first establishing whether there's a better price available. We want to get all the feedback to make decisions first. But the purpose is to position the property so it appears in more buyer searches, generates stronger online interest, gets more people through the home open and gives us a better chance of creating competition. Because if today's market really is prepared to pay 920 to 930 or even 940, the best way to discover that is to have multiple buyers competing rather than one buyer negotiating against the seller when they have the upper hand because they've seen that no one else is long at home open. And in many cases, if they come and even like the property and don't see many other people, they won't go ahead with making an offer at all, they're just going to wait and see what happens. So the numbers tell us whether it's working. And once the property's launched, I'm watching the response very closely. Across the two main websites, real estate.com and reweigh. Ideally, I want at least 800 total online views per week in the first couple of weeks. And that should generally translate through to 10 to 12 buyers inspecting at the main home open. I'd want at least eight buyers as a minimum benchmark and ideally at least one genuine offer coming from that activity. And usually from 10 to 12 buyers, I tend to get two offers. So that's why I figure if we get at least eight through, we should at least get one offer. But these aren't rigid numbers, right? So quality matters much more than quantity. You can have four buyers come through and receive two offers and still be able to compete them off against each other and end up with a, you know, a really good result. So that's a very strong response. But you can also have 15 through and every one of them tells you it's too expensive. That doesn't suit them. That the negatives for the property, you know, they don't see value that the properties worth less ultimately than what we're asking. So that's not a strong response just because the inspection numbers looked good. So I'm looking at the full picture. I'm looking at the total online views per week. I'm looking at the inquiry levels, the inspection numbers, the buyer feedback that we get at the time of the home open, the follow up feedback that I get early the next week, whether they see value, whether they're considering an offer and whether genuine offers are actually coming in or whether we're sitting above where everyone sees value and the gaps too big for people to even make an offer or there's aspects to the property that just doesn't suit them enough for them to go ahead regardless. So if the market's telling you something, we've got to act quickly. This is particularly important in the current market because unfortunately what I'm finding in a number of cases is that the market has dropped further than everyone initially realizes. You can have similar properties sitting on the market at 920,000 in their example above, but they aren't actually selling there. So they sit for 30 days, then 45 days, they're becoming stale at that sort of time and eventually they may sell for 870 or 880 because the markets move down even further in the meantime. They've gone stale when people come along. They don't see anyone else there. They eventually adjust to meet where the markets then fall into and by that point, the adjustment doesn't even get seen by that many buyers because they've already seen it discounted the property and it starts to get a bit of a stigma around it too. Buyers can almost smell the desperation in the seller once it mate. Everyone can see that it's been online that long. Much harder to create competition and get a good result when you've been chasing your tail, chasing the market and haven't found where people see value. So meanwhile, let's take a comparable property that we spoke about if we launched it from 899, we might generate much stronger interest because of being just below the surge bracket. We create competition at the home open and we sell relatively quickly for 920,000. So would the seller have preferred 940? Absolutely. That was the number that they had in their head. But the important question here is, did we find the best price that was genuinely available in the current market? And that's what I want to do and know for sure before we go accepting something and if 920 is it, then you far better off getting that than the other person that's gone on too high, chased the market down and then ended up at 870 to 880. And that's regularly the case when I look at what's happened to the other properties that were on at the same time as us. So it's far better for us to find the best price that's out there when the property was fresh before it became stale, before the market had another couple of months to move against us and it's really worth noting that comparable sales are looking backward. So if you're online looking at the sold properties by that point, the property's sold, it's taken six weeks, sometimes eight weeks to settle. That's why pricing is very difficult at the moment because conditions are changing quickly. A sale at 930, six weeks ago is useful evidence, but it's still yesterday's evidence and it doesn't guarantee that the next buyer will come and pay 930 today. So if the enquiry is down, once we've gone to market and we're measuring things and seeing what the response is, if the inspection numbers are down and the buyers coming through, consistently say that they don't see value, a change needs to happen quickly. That could be adjusting the price positioning because demand pricing isn't about giving the property away. It's about finding where the market is today, creating as much competition then as possible at that level and then negotiating the price back up as far as the market will allow. Just real quick, before we continue on with the episode, are you getting my email updates yet? If you're not, you're missing out on our suburb intelligence reports, which we tailor and prepare for your individual suburbs of interest, showing advanced stats and insights must get onto those. And I also send out exclusive invitations to our events, including webinars, some downers and workshops. So if you're not getting those, head on over to investorsedge.com.au/join and make sure you're receiving my email updates. And that leads us into our next point because we've chosen our timing, we've presented the property really well, we've marketed it exceptionally. That then really brings us down to pricing because we've got those other three things right. We then know we just have to find where the price is exactly at, whereas if you don't have the presentation the way you want or the marketing exposing the property widely, then you could almost look to those as being part of the problem. But if it comes down to price, you get that right, then how do we create this competition to make the most of the people that we're getting through? That's the that's number five that we'll go through now. So this is probably the area where the selling process has changed the most as the market has cooled. And how it worked previously for myself anyway is that I would generally try to condense almost all buyers into one home open per week. And at the peak of the market, that could mean 30 or 40 groups arriving at roughly the same time. And there was no question that there was demand. Everyone could see it. The biggest problem wasn't actually managing the home open numbers. It was managing the number of offers that we got afterwards. And sometimes it felt like juggling plates. You might have a large number of buyers wanting updates, offers being improved, especially the way that I negotiate and compete people off against each other. So there's a lot of sort of moving parts to that offer negotiation. People are changing their conditions. Partners are needing to talk, finance, breakers are involved. And the challenge, Kramia River, it was good problems to have, was making sure that everyone had the opportunity to put forward their best position without losing track of anyone. That's why I really improved my offer tracking processes and how I worked things through and made sure that everyone had their chance. And when I got enough of it was higher than someone else's, I'd let everyone know not the price, but that they're going to miss out. And I'd really go through that process as many times as it took. So a lot of communications in there, especially if we've got four or five offering parties or more. So what I'm doing now is I still like having one main home open on the weekend because the objective is still to condense as much of that interest together as possible because buyers then see other buyers and that creates the competitive tension. We want a bit of a line out the front. We want there to be a buzz at the home open. We want it to be like the most popular cafe that you go to. It makes you want to buy something. The advertising also, I now make it clear in my adverts that if you can't attend the The home open time, the property can be viewed by appointment and to see admit you're you're available times. So that's become really important because there's many buyers, especially in Perth that are flying fly out, some work the weekend, some of school sport events functions on the weekend, some simply can't make that inspection time that we have. And I'm finding the number of agents with the vast majority out there aren't prepared to take the extra time to show those buyers through during the week. Whereas I've sold one or two properties per week lately through those private viewings. And what I'm trying to do is still create competition around the private inspection, even if I have one buyer booked to come privately, doesn't necessarily mean that the inspection stays completely private. The buyer is qualified first. We make sure that they've got their finance together that they've seen enough to sort of know what they're looking for. And then if we're heading out to the property anyway, we we've usually put it up as a viewing online around around the same time. And that gives other interested buyers the opportunity to attend as well. Now, instead of one person walking through on their own, there might be another one or two groups there. And that changes the dynamic where there's visible interest that the first buyer was not expecting. So the buyer knows they're not only, you know, the only person that's considering it. And I especially like doing this when we go to do a second viewing for someone that's interested from the weekend. I want to just have another look at it before they firm up and decide whether they're going to submit their offer. You know, when I'm calling through every buyer that has come through, I let them know about our second viewing time that we're having. And often get another one or two buyers. And then we put it up as a general home open, general viewing online and get hopefully another one or two to see it and come. So why I don't always want everyone at the one inspection now is worth understanding. So why I like the mixture of the main home open and the private viewings is if I especially know for that property that demand is soft up and we're getting less of numbers to the first time open or to the second home open. Let's say, you know, only two or three have turned up on the weekend, but we've had a genuine buyer want to get through that can't make weekends. That's an even greater reason to show them through during the week because if they'd come on the weekend, they might be asking, you know, why is nobody else here? That can undermine their sense of value. So the current strategy is about balance. I condense the main body of interest into the weekend home open where possible. I also create additional viewing opportunities for the qualified buyers during the week. And that helps maintain momentum without necessarily advertising week demand for those softer properties that we don't we know we're not going to have as many people along to. So how does my strategy proceed from there? Well, what I want to do is get the first offer in and this has also changed the way I handle the first offer, the market that we're in. Imagine I think a property should be worth 930 and the seller in the case above once 940. A buyer says I like it, but I'm only prepared to offer 890. I don't necessarily want to say now that's way too low. Don't bother. You know, what I want to do is I want the offer in writing. I want to get it down and present it to the owner because that's giving us real feedback on what a genuine buyer is actually prepared to offer because that offer actually has value as well. He gives us a genuine starting point and importantly, it gives me something to work with. Now I can call every other buyer who's shown some interest and say I've now got a written offer on the property. If you're considering putting something forward, we've got a deadline at two o'clock tomorrow. Let us know before then if you've got further interest, I can then take that. If the offers receive before the weekend as well, I can take that to the home open tell everyone at the time gives us a lot better stance to show that someone's already interested and we've said a deadline for early the next week and that moves the negotiation from one to one to many and that's a much stronger position for us to be in. So don't dismiss the first offer too quickly either because there's another important reason for getting that first offer in writing. What if it actually isn't too low? What if I think the property's worth 930? The seller's hoping for 940, but what if after talking with 5 or 6 other interested buyers that we've had through on the weekend, they're all seeing value at around 860 to 880? Suddenly that first offer looks very different at 890 because we're probably going to have to be reducing to meet the market at from 870 or from 860 even just because people have said 860 to 880 doesn't mean they're actually willing to write up and put that forward. So we've now gotten further feedback. We've gotten an offer written at 890. The market's given us evidence and that doesn't mean we immediately go accepting it but it means understanding what buyers are actually prepared to do and then trying to create the competition from there with this offer that we've written. So the other thing I'm really finding in this market is that buyers need more time now. It's a little bit frustrating when I'm sort of coming from the fresh memories of being able to get deals done quickly when people are interested but this is probably the biggest change in this market is that buyers are taking longer to make decisions. Previously someone might inspect at 11am, home open, have an offer to me early that afternoon, potentially even before 12 o'clock, they knew that if they didn't act somebody else probably would. And now buyers often want another viewing before they decide, another conversation with their partner, they want to speak to their broker, they want to review comparable sales and do their research, they want to think through the property again and they want to reassure themselves that they're not buying immediately before the market falls further. And that's the hard part, they can turn on the news, get cold feet, sleep on it overnight and change their mind, have other friends in their ears saying why are you buying now when the market's going to drop further. So even when an offer deadline is set and they're told there's another offer coming in, that isn't always enough at the moment to spark them to put their interest forward. It often takes a phone call and this is where I'm having to go a lot deeper with buyers and really help them with their decision, help them work through that decision and I might say something like you know talk me through what's holding you back and sometimes the answer is look I don't really want to compete, I'll just find something else, that's a classic one I hear and that's when I sometimes ask do you really want to buy a property that no one else wants because if no one else is interested, perhaps it's overpriced, undesirable, poorly positioned or there's something about the property that makes people shy away from it and competition isn't automatically a bad thing, I just reframe it for people and as on our buyers agency side I'm often pretty worried, let's the properties off market and we're having a clean run out without anyone else, I'm pretty worried if no one else is interested in it because that means it is going to be overpriced or undesirable and I think having that other interest from other buyers is actually validation that other people see value in the property as well and that doesn't mean somebody should blindly pay any price but avoiding every competitive situation isn't necessarily a good buying strategy either, so the other classic one I'm coming up with at the moment is fear that the market will keep falling and look that's valid because it is decreasing month on month and it's the same with our investors and other buyers that we're working with on the buyer's agency side, they're wondering what if prices keep falling and that's completely understandable so I'll often ask and look at how long you're planning to own the property for, the answer is usually five years, 10 years or probably longer so then I'll then ask if you're planning to hold it for 10 years how much does it really matter if prices fell further for another three or six months because nobody consistently peaks the exact bottom of a property market or the exact top, normally the bottom only becomes obvious after the market has already turned around and once that happens psychology can change very quickly buyers can rush back in quickly choice reduces for them competition increases and prices can jump five, 10 or 15% much faster than people think that that may take longer than three, six months it could end up being 12, 18, 24 months but I suspect that the majority of the correction will happen and continue to over the next six months but I think it's probably going to take 12, 18, 24 months before things turn around entirely and we're probably going to have to go to the next election before we do that. Do you also just sit on the sidelines in the meantime if you're a buyer and and pass by that opportunity to be living in a home that you really want that's what I'd be looking at as well so if someone's waiting to perfectly hit the bottom of the market and save another 20, 30,000 they can suddenly find themselves paying substantially more when things swing back the other way and missing out on the type of property they wanted all together too because their borrowing capacities are also decreasing at the same time with interest rates going up at the moment and when the market's much tighter there's less choice and so you end up having to choose and make even greater trade-offs so I'm not telling them that the market definitely won't fall further nobody knows that the point is to put the short-term movement into context of their actual ownership period and what they're you know how long they're planning to have it for. So once we have genuine interest competition can still push the price up and that's really important to understand so there's still plenty of buyers out there. Once enough genuine interest is there competition can still be created and maybe the first offer is 900,000 that brings another buy a forward at 9.10. Another buy then comes up with 9.10. 15. Someone who had been sitting on the fence now thinks I don't want to miss this and they put forward a 9.25. Now the seller is no longer negotiating with one buyer. There's multiple buyers competing and that's what I'm trying to create in every instance and I've done this in far worse markets than this previously where we were almost putting a bubble around our sale, showing people that there is other interest. There is competition. They get their fear of missing out, still happening and that gets as a premium result. That final part is super critical. So that then leads us through to how we negotiate and I've mentioned little parts of how I do this throughout this episode already because really the negotiation is only possible if every other part is done well too and I think negotiation gets misunderstood. So people often imagine it starts when an offer arrives. I don't think it does. Negating leverage is actually created before the offer. So the first five parts of the strategic sale create that negotiating leverage and if the property has poor presentation, weak marketing, a price that buyers aren't responding to one buyer and 60 days on the market that then there isn't a magic script that an agent can use to suddenly create that leverage. But there is strong. If there is alternatively, which is what I'm trying to set up, strong buyer interest, multiple inspections, multiple offers and several people worried that somebody else might secure the property. That's a completely different negotiating position for us to be in. So expert negotiation isn't really the culmination of it's really bringing everything together and building on how we've set the strategy up. And what we want is one to many negotiation. That's where we're competing buyers off against each other. And instead of one buyer asking, you know, what's the least I need to pay when we've got four serious buyers or even two serious buyers, they're asking how do I pay more than this other person to secure the place that I really want. And that's a much stronger environment for the seller and we can create it in any market is the point. So I try to get the offer first from people and then I go deeper. So in this market, I'm also more careful not to push too hard before the offer has actually been secured in writing. Because if someone says I'm thinking around 900, I don't necessarily want to respond with, that's not even, that's not going to buy it or be overly defensive that pushes them away because they may simply disappear then. I'd rather say, you know, put your offer forward, let me take it to the owner. Now there's an actual buyer getting involved. I sort of talked to them about how we can do our best. Can you sharpen up your terms? And can we make this as attractive as possible? We'll put it in, give it a shot. Then the deeper discussion can actually happen with the buyer. I can find out why they've chosen that figure. What are they comparing it with? What concerns do they have? And how much do they actually like the property? What would they be disappointed to lose it over? And importantly, what are the other buyers doing? As if another two or three offers appear, there is now genuine competition to take back to that first buyer. And that's much stronger position than trying to talk them up before. There is any evidence somebody else wants the property. So I also don't reveal another buyer's confidential position. So I don't tell someone on, you know, the other buyer's offered 937,000 instead. I say, at the moment your offer is not the strongest that we've got and you're going to miss out on the property. I want to give you an opportunity to put forward your best position. So let me know before two o'clock tomorrow if you'd like to increase it. So I will let people know where they stand. I don't tell people what the best price is that I've got exactly. Now the buyer has that choice. Maybe they improve it by five grand. See if it's worth putting in. Maybe they improve it by 15. Maybe they say no. That's genuinely as far as I'm prepared to go. That's when I at least know, okay, they've made an informed decision. I'm not trying to force someone. I'm just trying to give them the information to know that as it stands, they're going to miss out on the property and give them every chance to increase it if they can afford to pay the extra and they want to. So price isn't the only thing also being negotiated because a lot of buyers have cash at the moment, which certainly helps get things together and know for sure that it's going to happen, especially when a lot of other buyers are subject to sale and I've written more subject to sale offers over the last month. And we really need to look through to who's the agent handling that. Are they being realistic on their price? Do they have a realistic chance that they're going to be able to get the sale timely fashion? And that's where a lot of us top agents are working together because when I see that it's a good agent handling it or I'm going to handle it myself, then that can give a lot of extra confidence to the seller that it's actually going to go somewhere. And I look at it more as a backup plan when we accept a subject to sell off or we have to be happy with the price and happy to proceed with it. But we stay on the market. We keep looking for a better offer in the meantime. If one comes up, we can give the two business days notice for the first offer to come good. And I think it's really great if you are making a subject to sell off or to have the bridging finance organized if you really want that property and it is a unique one. Have that ready to enact and so that you can still proceed. But it really comes down to being realistic on what you can get for your place as well because you don't want to set yourself up for over needing to get to higher price and not making the whole change over happen in time before someone else comes in over the top of you. So headline price is not automatically the best offer. We need to look deeper at conditions and make sure that we've got a realistic chance of getting this all together. So I also keep working until the competition is exhausted. So there's a big difference between a good offer and the best offer that's available. So imagine the properties positioned at around 900,000. We're asking from 899 and offer comes in at 930. Everyone might be excited. That is a strong offer. But if there's another three or four genuine buyers engaged, there's still another question. Is that 930 actually the best result that this competitive situation can produce? Maybe it is. I need to go find out. Maybe another buyer goes to 940 then someone else moves to 947. Another buyer decides they really don't want to lose the property and goes to 955. So this is still happening in this market. And if the first good offer had simply been accepted, as I say many agents rushing off to do, there may have been tens of thousands of dollars left on the table. And agents were doing this in the in the hottest market that we've come from and they're still doing it now. You've got to be sure that what you've gotten is the best. But you also don't want to drag things out too long and intercept the expectations right with that first offer. Imagine if it withdrawals, you don't end up with anything else that's better than it. And at the moment, buyers can go to sleep overnight and wake up the next day and have cold feet. And I'm seeing that more and more too. So it's a balancing act between the time that you set as a deadline for other people to get in. The expectations you set with the first offer so that they still are in place. And I'd be much more looking to try to condense that time window of decision and not try to drag things out because more time equals more chance for people to change their mind as well. So how all things six things work together in my six point strategic sale is we've got strategic timing where we've chosen the right moment based on the owner's situation, the tendency in the market conditions. We get the emotive presentation going and we're selling the lifestyle ideally and not just, you know, the property. We've got the trifector of marketing where we expose the property to all the traditional media as well as targeted social media and my database to really get as much of that interest to see the property at the start of the campaign. We want to then set a price that's going to stop people from scrolling past it. And if they've got six properties they could look out on the weekend, we want yours to be the top one or two on that list and make sure they come. Once we get them along there, I'm going to concentrate the interest as and manage that. And if someone can't make the weekends, I want to ensure everyone gets the chance to see it. And we want people to feel that competition among other people. Once we get someone that is willing to make an offer, I'll write it up at no matter what price. I'll let everyone know. I'll set a deadline. That'll help people get off the fence, make a decision. I'll call through and speak to everyone, massage them through, get reframe for things for people if they've got some crazy stuff going on in their heads. And then we'll get into the negotiation where we can discover the strongest combination of price conditions and certainty that we can get. And the really important question, really important point is to all this that these things are all connected. And sometimes one is deliberately compromise to strengthen another. We can't get everything ideal as much in this market. There's going to be some trade-offs, especially on the timing versus presentation. And we've really just got to look at what's going to get us the best result overall. And that's where it's really about setting that unique strategy rather than simply doing the same thing for every seller and running a checklist. So there's one final thing I'd like to leave you with. The selling price isn't simply a scorecard for how well the property has performed. That money has a job to do next. And it might reduce the mortgage on your home. It might fund that next property. It might reduce portfolio debt, help you upgrade your home, create more income by translating it through to other assets when you're at that, you know, right stage of life, or simply give you more flexibility and choice for the next stage that you're going in. to. So selling deserves just as much strategy, I think, is buying does. And rather than simply asking, what's your property worth? I'd be asking, what decisions can you make throughout the sale process that gives us the best chance of extracting everything from the current market and finding the best that's out there that buyers are prepared to pay. And sometimes that's better timing, sometimes it's presentation, sometimes it's pricing, sometimes it's creating competition. And sometimes it's knowing exactly how far to push the negotiation, but it's really one thing in isolation. So hopefully this has taken you inside my overall strategy and how I'm getting great results in this market. And if I can help with any of your property decisions coming up, just get in touch. Have a good one. Just a reminder, the information discussed in this podcast is general in nature. As we don't know your specific situation, you should always seek professional advice before taking any action. For free market ports on your suburbs of interest and other helpful resources to grow your wealth, make sure you join my property investor update at investorsedge.com.au/join. And finally, make sure you remember about Perth Property Investment Facebook group. To be part of the conversation with other like-minded investors, get help to your questions, and get a feel for what's going on out here in the market. I'll see you in the group.