We’ve had a busy week with lots of appraisals and listings to do and again a few sales getting over the line with prices on all fronts being ‘soft’. Probably most of the local agents had a sudden rush of blood when they saw my ad this week and now I’ll explain why. Back a few weeks ago the Shepparton News redesigned the weekly real estate news which on the face of it was a fresh new format. The reality was though that the Shepparton News said agents were advertising less and that the real estate guide was getting smaller, so they decided to make agents have a minimum size per ad per property which was nearly double in size. This meant that instead of us being able to charge $85.50 per ad we now had to charge around $150. The Shepparton News also dropped the mini editorials and extra listings in the now gone SN Weekly which we received for free. After telling them that this was unfair I was told that “I needed to learn how to sell advertising”. (This was a bit of deja vu as I was told the same thing several years ago by another agent who tries to sell really big ads as he said that real estate was all about promoting their agency and that the bigger their ad was in the paper, the better their agency looked.) My response was that I am not here to sell advertising on behalf of the Shepparton News. I am here to sell real estate in the most cost effective manner for my vendors and the advertising me used up until the new format did exactly that. Also in the case presented by the Shepparton News my text content was the same but the image was bigger so really there was no benefit for anyone apart from them. The second issue was that I have spent the past three years developing at considerable expense a totally automated system which basically runs our office and eliminates the need for office staff to do many tasks, one of which is putting together the weekly newspaper advertising. Our system also automatically does accounts, books in advertising, designs the ad layout, organises open homes and sends out numerous emails with the press of a button. All of these tasks didn’t work with the new Shepparton News layout so we had to go back to doing it manually which was a real frustration and which would have ultimately resulted in us having the cut down on the time and effort put into selling houses or employ someone in the office. Many months of further development would also be required to make my system work with the new layout. Additionally, the point came to a head this week where we had a whole page of ads which if done in the old format, would have cost around $1,200 yet to have the same number of ads in the new format, we needed to book 3 pages at a cost of over $3,300. What a huge difference in the cost which is ultimately bourne by vendors. Besides, I am buying a page of the real estate guide so why should the Shepparton News dictate how many ads I can put on a page just so they can have a uniform looking real estate guide and in their words,’ put all the agents on a level playing field.’ Accordingly I had a meeting with the Shepparton News as a result of which I am now on a different contract to every other agent in the area and I am paying a higher price to advertise in the real estate guide. The positive off shoot for us is that now I can have up to 24 ads on a page and although I am paying a premium, I can offer ads to vendors at a much reduced cost than every other agent. In fact, vendors will spend less than half the amount charged by every other agent, so I believe that I’ll have a huge marketing advantage in time to come. In relation to the size of the ads, who cares? It’s been proved time and time again that, contrary to what some agents tell you, vendors don’t need a big ad to sell a house and besides, un-necessary marketing expenses are better off in the vendors pocket rather than that of the local newspaper. It’s also worth noting that if I had a full ad every week the total saving to vendors would be around $100,000 per year. I have already saved vendors well over 1 million in commission so the savings generated by my office will certainly continue to grow which reiterates my belief that I am doing the right thing. The coming week should be interesting times for our local paper and as I said last week, at least for once it’s not my head in the middle of the target. Selling properties occupied by tenants can prove difficult, as on occasions, some tenants don’t want to move and go out of their way to impede the progress of a sale and I am sure you’ll be interested to know some of the things that have happened to us over the years. · A family member was left at home to play the drums during an open house. · The front gate was chained to stop people attending an inspection. · A tenant walked around behind each person inspecting the property ‘to make sure they didn’t steal anything’ · A tenant moved a couch across the front doorway so people had to climb over the couch to enter, thinking that this made the unit look small. · A tenant was in the shower when the open home time started. · A tenant was still in bed. · A tenant sat in the lounge with the television blaring playing war games · A tenant left pets unrestrained to jump all over people attending the property. One of the major real estate web sites released a report on Tuesday showing how local agencies were ranked compared to all the other local agencies in relation to market share and we were in the number 3 position with 11.8%. I was pretty pleased with this when both the number one and two spots were held by agencies with multiple locations and in one case over 20 agents. Other interesting figures were that the average time on the market for local properties had blown out to 199 days, we had visitors on our site for 43% longer than other agencies and we had 20% more property photo views per ad compared to the average. I guess this comes about by our policy of trying to give viewers as much detail as possible. Someone stole one of my open house pointer signs at a Friday night open in Lightfoot St, Shepparton so if you see it thrown away somewhere a phone call would be appreciated. This weekend we did 14 open homes and had 47 attendees which was a huge spike in numbers. I am always available to answer any of your real estate questions on 5831 6405. Please feel free to pass this email on to any person who you think may be interested in its contents. NOTE: The advice given in this newsletter is to be taken as general advice only and should not be relied upon. Regards Ken McNamara.
Posted on: Sun, 06 Oct 2013 22:13:01 +0000
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