Are you having difficulty selling a luxury home? High-end real estate can be both financially rewarding and challenging to sell. Factors outside of your control, like the economy and market in which you’re selling, can affect your ability to get a home sold. That’s when creativity can be a major asset. Choosing an unconventional method to market your luxury home can help a property spend fewer days on the market. Even in a tough market, selling a luxury home at a fair price point is possible when you think outside the box. After all, unusual homes should be marketed in unusual ways.
Instead of an online listing, use an old-school approach and send stunning property brochures to people in the neighbourhood. Brochures offer the benefit of a lot of page space, which allows you to include images of the house liberally. Remember, everyone knows what the outside of the house looks like, but include inside shots, and you’ll be sure to pique their interest. Plus, if you send out brochures to people who already live in the neighbourhood, they might have family or friends who are looking to buy near them. Many people who live in luxury homes or gated communities prefer someone they know to move in down the street than a stranger.
Distributing brochures will alert the neighbours that your property is for sale and increase the likelihood of referrals. Make sure your brochure mirrors your luxury home using glossy paper, high-resolution images and a cohesive page layout. Choose a professional designer to prepare the brochure to maximize the home’s features—the difference is astounding. Our preferred partner, Real Marketing, provides just such a service.
Your luxury listing is important, so why not dedicate a whole website to it? Choose a website creation service, such as our preferred partner, Real Marketing, to help you make a beautiful landing page for the property. The home’s website is the perfect location to add as much information about the home as you can, from pictures to square footage, unique features, local neighbourhood amenities and whom to contact for further inquiries.
Making the page online is just the first step of a successful property website. Once you finish the website, you’ll have to get it in front of the right audience. Here are some ways you can make sure your stunning landing page gets seen:
- Promote the website through your social media channels.
- Implement a text marketing campaign and link to the website.
- Hand out flyers with one striking image of the home, and include the URL for the website at the bottom of the flyer.
- Include the website in an email blast so that your existing contacts see and tell their friends.
9 Tips for Selling a Luxury Home
The real estate market is different when you’re selling a luxury home. Suppose you have a high-end property to sell, everything from how you price it to how you market it has to be optimized for the right buyers. The higher up you go in the price bracket, the more you’re going to have to make carefully chosen moves that appeal to a subset of buyers with a lot to spend and a lot of expectations for what they’ll get.
If this is your first time selling a luxury home, you may be a bit wary about stepping foot into this exclusive market. The more money a house is listed for, the narrower the buyer pool becomes, which means you might have a long road ahead of you. But there is good news: Realtor.com’s luxury home index showed a 25% increase in luxury home sales across the U.S. last summer, with 17 out of 91 luxury markets seeing a 10% price growth increase year-over-year. So while the luxury market might be tough, there’s a lot of action.
Overall, market trends are certainly important, but at the end of the day, it’s your job as a seller to do the best you can to sell your luxury property—and sell it fast. Of course, there are no guarantees in real estate, but there are certain things that you can do to make your luxury home stand out even more than it already does and rope in the right buyer. Here are nine tips for selling a luxury home that can help you edge out the competition.
Work with a realtor who has experience in the luxury market.
You’re going to want to be sure to work with someone who has proven experience successfully navigating the luxury real estate market for sellers. All real estate brokers have their specialties, and you must understand the ins and outs of selling a luxury home, particularly when it comes to pricing and advertising.
To find the best realtor for the job, start with your network. If you know anyone who has successfully sold a luxury home in your area, ask for a referral—even if that agent isn’t a good fit for you, they might know somebody else who is. If you don’t have somebody, you can ask, limit your search solely to luxury real estate groups and be sure to look at their past-sale portfolios and read any reviews that you can find.
Bring in a professional stager.
One of the most important parts of selling a home is staging the property so that buyers can picture themselves living there. This is especially true in the luxury housing market, where homes are often completely customized to individual tastes. While it’s not necessary to strip your home down to its bones so that a new owner can make it their own, they should be able to see the potential in it and to view the property without being overwhelmed by your own personal style.
Staging your home to sell is a major undertaking, and it isn’t easy to do on your own, so bring in a professional stager who can guide you through the process. In addition to helping you optimize your home for potential buyers to come through, a stager can also assist you in finding ways to highlight its most exclusive features.
Find a balance when setting your price.
Setting the correct price is one of the trickiest parts of selling a luxury home. Price it too high, and you risk letting your home go stale on the market; the price is too low, and you might end up getting less for it than it’s really worth.
It’s up to you and your realtor to find the happy middle ground and settle on a price that speaks to what your home has to offer and its true value without potentially deterring a large chunk of your buyer pool. The goal is to remain competitive while also getting as much as you can for the property. This again speaks to why it’s so critical to not just work with any real estate agent but one who has experience pricing and selling luxury homes.
When it comes to photos, think of quality and quantity.
Shoddy photos don’t cut it in the traditional real estate market, and it’s certainly not going to cut it here. To get potential buyers into your home, you’re going to have to invest in high-quality photos and lots of them. Your realtor will be able to recommend a photographer for getting the job done right and can oversee the process.
In addition to still photographs, give your listing an extra boost by including videos and a virtual tour of the property. Drone shots can also provide buyers with everything they need to decide whether it’s worth coming out to view the property, especially if your home is on a lot of land. Having lots of imagery is important, particularly when appealing to foreign buyers, who often make up a lot of the luxury buying market but can’t always come out to see a property firsthand.
Market wisely
When it comes to selling a luxury home, a yard sign and an MLS listing shared on your Facebook page aren’t going to cut it. Luxury buyers aren’t looking for homes in the standard places, so that’s not where you should be focusing your marketing efforts. It takes money to make money, so expect to invest in top-quality printed marketing materials, in addition to professional staging and photography.
Skip the public open house
You need to cultivate an air of exclusivity when selling a luxury property, which means, in part, ditching the public open house in favour of appointment-only viewings. There are two benefits to doing it this way: one, you make buyers feel that seeing the property is a privilege, and two, you avoid having to waste your time setting up your home for an open house that will likely be filled mostly with non-buyers who are just curious about what the property looks like.
Because your buyer pool is limited, your viewings probably will be too, but that’s okay! In luxury home sales, it’s much less about getting as many buyers as possible through the door than it is about getting the right buyers through the door. And those buyers aren’t coming to a public open house. If you want to bring in multiple buyers at once, talk to your agent about hosting an invite-only event.
Focus on what makes your home stand out
In the early 2000s, the term “McMansions” took off to describe a certain subset of luxury homes that were large and expensive but relatively tasteless. Avoid falling into the McMansion trap by working to distinguish your home from other properties at the same price point—specifically by downplaying the things that buyers will find elsewhere (such as marble countertops) and highlighting the things that make your home so special (such as that wine cellar in the basement).
The unique, high-value features of your home are your main selling points. They should be featured prominently in the photographs and videos on your listing and be mentioned as assets in any written marketing materials. Don’t assume that your home speaks for itself and that buyers will see its best features when they come for a viewing—lead with those features, and let them be the pull that brings the buyers in.
Develop a “brand” for your home
One of the keys to effectively marketing and selling anything is building a distinct identity, and the same goes for your house. You don’t need to go over the top with how you reference and speak about your luxury home, but you should have a focused message that guides all of your marketing materials. Consider purchasing an individual logo for your home that can be put on any relevant content or even coming up with a slogan. Again, your bargain, your identity doesn’t need to be overt but underlay the marketing strategy.
Offer some perks
The more value you can offer, the better, especially if there are other luxury homes for sale that boast similar features to yours. Can you part with that grand piano? How about that custom master bedroom furniture set? Sweetening the pot with a few added bonuses is a good way to separate yourself further from the competition and might just give you the edge that you need in a saturated market.
Pros & Cons Of Buying A Luxury Home
Does owning a luxury home sound like a dream? For some owners, it’s actually a painful reality. While the elaborate designs and dazzling amenities of a luxury property are appealing, buying a luxury home includes the same number of pros and cons that you’d weigh when buying a more modest piece of real estate. Before you set your sights on owning a great living space, take a moment to consider a few of the advantages and drawbacks that these homeowners face.
Pros
Amenities Galore
Unlike many cookie-cutter developments in traditional communities, luxury homes are often highly customized and cater to specific interests. Fabulous features like at-home basketball courts, theatres, gourmet kitchens, multi-car garages, separate guest wings, and rooftop entertainment areas are highly desirable. Many of these homes are also ripe for customization, allowing the buyer to transform nearly any room into the space of their dreams. Simply put, luxury homes offer amenities that standard single-family homes and condos simply cannot offer.
Enhanced Quality of Life
Those who purchase a luxury estate often do so for the quality of life it affords. Many luxury homes are located within communities that feature world-class amenities like resort-style pools, golf courses, private beach access, fitness centres, restaurants, athletic fields, etc. These communities are also often located within proximity to highly desirable shopping, dining, and entertainment destinations.
Cons
High & Constant Cost of Ownership
Maintaining a luxury home can be a costly affair. Interior cleaning, exterior upkeep, and repair costs can add up to tens of thousands of dollars over a few years. These are in addition to yearly property taxes, community fees, and other mandatory expenses.
Unpredictable Loss of Value
Unfortunately, luxury homes are not immune from the volatility of the real estate market. During unfavourable years, these properties can lose enough of their value to significantly displease the owner. However, there are also ways to lose your investment, even in a healthy market. For example, you may choose to complete many expensive upgrades or renovations that may not give you a noticeable return on investment.
Owning a luxury home is the ideal living situation for some families. For others, it can be a headache and ultimately a bad investment. Be sure to consult with a luxury real estate professional to determine if buying a luxury home is the right decision for your lifestyle.