Anyone who sells real estate knows that the luxury home market is a whole different ball game. Due to their prices, high-end houses in Atlanta typically appeal to a narrower pool of buyers. This presents a unique challenge for sellers looking to sell quickly. As a result, everything from the specialized décor to the home marketing strategy has to be optimized for a very specific audience for high-end property.
If it’s your first time dealing with such an exclusive market, you’ll very likely find you can’t just break into this niche without a solid understanding of Atlanta luxury home values and how they’re priced. In addition, you’ll be sure to benefit from the insights of a mentor who’s already familiar with what it takes to market unique high-end properties. So be—at least initially—open to working under a luxury home specialist who can help you get your feet wet.
Also, be aware that learning the ropes in this market may require a ton of patience on your part, especially given that it’ll still be your job as a seller to sell the home—and sell it fast! So if you find yourself desperately googling, “how to sell my house fast in Atlanta,” you’ll be sure to appreciate these five tips to help you rope in the right buyers:
Know what you’re getting yourself into
If this is your first time selling in the luxury market, don’t be disheartened by how long it takes to sell. According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the average home will stay on the market for a median of 31 days. Compare this to luxury single-family homes priced at $1 million or more, which usually spend a median of 54 days on the market.
As a seller, it will help to understand that selling quickly in the luxury market is all about being specific. Potential luxury home buyers usually know what they want and their price range, so it all boils down to working with a buyer’s taste and preferences.
Work with a real estate agent with proven experience in the luxury market.
When entering the high-stakes luxury market, it never hurts to have the help of an expert. Having an experienced agent by your side is a boon in any real estate transaction, but in the luxury market, it may be imperative. All real estate brokers have their specialties, and as such, you’ll want to work with someone who’s had prior experience navigating the inner workings of the luxury real estate market.
Fortunately, finding a realtor shouldn’t be difficult, as you can limit your search to luxury real estate groups. Just be sure to do your research and look through any past-sale portfolios they may have, or check out any reviews left by past clients.
Invest in quality visuals
Making sure your listing has lots of quality imagery vital, especially in these current times. In fact, regardless of the market, buyers are more likely to look at pictures than they are to read the listing. As such, you’ll want to invest in high-quality photos and consider including videos and virtual tours in your listing as well. Hire a professional real estate photographer for the best results!
Cultivate a brand of exclusivity
Here’s a pro tip: skip the standard public open house and do appointment-only viewings instead. This will make viewing the property feel more like a “privilege,” which will help cultivate a brand of exclusivity among potential buyers. As a bonus, you’ll also avoid wasting time setting up the home for an open house that will likely attract people who only want to view it with no real capability nor intent to buy.
Market appropriately
The saying “it takes money to make money” is especially true in the luxury market, so brace yourself to invest in top-notch marketing materials on top of professional home staging and real estate photography. Putting up a “sell my house” listing on a Facebook page targeting Atlanta buyers isn’t likely to reach your target clientele in this digital day and age.
When creating your listing, make sure to emphasize the unique, high-value features of your home as the primary selling points. Lead with these features—they should be highlighted on the marketing materials and should be the focal point in photographs and videos on the listing.
12 Things the Best Luxury Realtors Do to Sell a Home
Craft a Highly-Customized, Comprehensive Marketing Plan.
A top luxury agent will have a marketing plan that is specific and customized for every home.
Most luxury agents will have a boilerplate marketing plan – the services they always provide — but there should also be some unique aspects to your property and your home’s overall story and theme.
A luxury home calls for a unique level of marketing. Chances are, the buyers who are qualified to purchase your luxury property are not wandering into open houses or mindlessly flipping through the real estate classifieds. The most well-suited prospective buyers for your luxury home or luxury condo may not even reside in your community, or they may visit only seasonally, and that means your luxury Realtor will need to employ a variety of innovative strategies to make sure as many prospective buyers as possible can see the home and the precise way its purchase would enrich their lives.
Listen Well – and Often
When a good agent begins the conversation about potentially marketing and selling your home, she will ask a variety of questions about your interests as well as the aspects of your home that truly set it apart. She will then use this information as a springboard to develop effective marketing ideas that go above and beyond the competition.
A good luxury agent will craft an entire campaign around your home. This campaign will likely have a clear theme, which ties into those aspects that set it apart. This theme will be consistent among brochures, mailers, and the agent’s customized website about your property. Of course, the entire campaign should be designed to appeal to the luxury buyer.
Sell More Than the Home
The best luxury realtors know that they aren’t selling simply a home. They are selling a lifestyle. The theme your agent chooses for the campaign should emphasize this lifestyle. In our Colorado resort market, many times, it centres on alpine skiing. Still, some homes are more suited for avid Nordic skiers, others for golfers, others for equestrians or people who love their cars and want space to work on them. These oenophiles dream of expansive wine cellars, grandmothers who dream of multiple bunk rooms, and history buffs dream of a historic home. Perhaps your home is perfect for entertaining. Again, these special features should be obvious in your agent’s marketing of the home.
A great luxury agent uses the special features of your home to find potential buyers… to reach the proper group of prospects. The modern world is ripe with opportunities to target specific, niche groups more than ever before.
Your luxury agent should know how to use these specific online advertising venues and be well-versed in how to use them.
A top luxury agent will also know where the luxury buyers are hailing from in your marketplace. For example, if your market has a number of second-home purchases, are there particular zip codes where these buyers tend to come from? In our market, second homeowners come primarily from a single place, followed closely by two others. Knowing this makes it even easier to offer highly targeted – and very effective – niche advertising.
Top luxury agents learn a product’s special features and design the marketing around those special features. For example, they determine which demographic could be most interested in the home and advertise accordingly. This is the fundamental basis of good marketing, and a good luxury agent will be employing this as a fundamental strategy.
Your agent may also have special luxury advertising opportunities that are unique to agents in their particular brokerage. In markets like mine, it makes sense to choose a luxury agent with the power (and referral network) of a large multinational brand. RE/MAX, for example, has a huge global presence and online and offline marketing pieces set up for you to easily target these luxury buyers. In addition, the RE/MAX Collection is a luxury magazine distributed regionally. The brokerage also offers exposure at global.remax.com and exclusive advertising discounts for its brokers in The Wall Street Journal, duPont Registry and Unique Homes.
Know-How to Tell a Good Story
Stories are powerful. A top luxury agent knows not only how to use them but how to discover them.
Marketing truly is about storytelling. It’s about evoking a particular feeling for a particular product, and nowhere is that more important, impactful and effective as in the marketing of fine luxury homes.
The best luxury agents know how to capture the attention of the people who feel the home was built just for them and their needs – and the people with the means to purchase such an exquisite property.
To do this, they must, once again, find the hook. What is the story of the home? To do this, top agents might ask you to take them on a detailed room by room showing of the home, asking for details and even stories about the construction of the home or special memories created there. Top agents will reach out to the builder and to the architect. They might solicit stories about how the home was created and aspects that they love the best.
Get Professional Staging Help, if Necessary
Many luxury homes have interiors that have been professionally and artfully designed. Again, a top luxury Realtor will provide ideas on what your prospective buyers will expect to see, paying particular attention to outdoor areas, formal dining areas, as well as the kitchen and great room. But, again, the goal is for the buyers to imagine themselves becoming part of the story of the home, imagining themselves eating Thanksgiving dinner at the table and summer picnics in the garden.
Know Every Inch of Your Property
The best luxury agents know each of the features, benefits, and selling points of the property. They have them committed to memory and available to all who visit the property in the form of a bound property brochure book. The agent should also have full-colour brochures, a well-crafted narrative about the home, supporting documents such as an ILC or survey, and bulleted lists of special features. Make sure your agent has these available in PDF form, as well, for easy distribution via the MLS.
Know-How to Attract Online and Social Media Exposure.
Most Realtors can easily make sure your home appears on Zillow.com, Trulia.com, Homes.com and Realtor.com, but today’s high-end properties should also be featured online, in a featured listing on the agent’s website and blog, for example, as well as in social media.
Once the luxury agent understands what sets your property apart from all the rest, this information can be used in social media to drive additional traffic. Therefore, your property should be a featured listing on your agent’s website and blog, as well as on your agent’s social media sites, with the proper use of keywords and hashtags to effectively reach the luxury market.
Provide Global Exposure.
International buyers routinely browse luxury property in the United States. Some brokerages, such as RE/MAX, have a significant online presence and agents and brokers who love to refer clients within the firm. Global.remax.com, for example, has listings from across the world and translates into 57 different currencies.
Utilize Print Advertising & Direct Mail
Even in this digital age, direct mail and print advertising remain integral to reaching particular demographics. A top luxury agent will create high-quality marketing brochures to highlight the features and benefits of your home, both for cooperating agents and potential buyers. The agent will also send direct mail postcards for select neighbourhoods and target areas and provide you with email brochures to share with friends & family or post on social media. The agent will also consult with you regarding print campaigns, as discussed above.
Host the Right Kind of Open Houses & Broker Events
Whether your luxury home is best marketed through open houses will depend on your market and your comfort in having the public in your home. Some realtors will say that open houses don’t sell luxury homes. On the other hand, you’ll often get many visitors who just want to look at your fine furnishings and finishes, like a home tour. Talk to your realtor about her recommendations regarding whether an open house can help to sell your property. One thing is true: open houses often get neighbours to come through, and neighbours might have friends or relatives they’d like to share information about the home with. Realtors know that it is not just the people who come into the open house. It’s the people they know.
One type of open house that is vital in all markets: the Broker Open House. These events are designed for real estate agents to preview your home, ask questions and provide feedback. Top luxury agents will make sure a broker open house is scheduled as soon as possible after listing to create a buzz in the broker community. These events may take the form of an afternoon luncheon, a private cocktail party, or an educational event, depending on the home, the hook, and the creativity of your luxury agent.
Always Use Professional Photography and Videography
To properly showcase a luxury home, a top luxury agent engages the services of a professional photographer. This photographer can not only showcase your home in the best light (literally) – but can and should also provide a quality video tour.
With Internet exposure so critical to the sale of your home, quality photographs are simply more important than ever before. They are essential. Clients will judge whether they want to look at your home based on the photos they can click from their laptops, tablets, and smartphones. The best luxury agents use top professional real estate photography services, and they are present during the photography session to ensure that the proper amenities and features are showcased.
Video tours are also very helpful in the promotion of luxury real estate. There is often a limit to the number of photographs that can be included in an online listing (for our MLS, that number is 35), but we can link to a video, which can show the entire property and the flow from room to room.
Ensure that the Pricing is Right.
Make sure your luxury agent provides data to back up any pricing recommendations. It should be apparent in your realtor’s Comparative Market Analysis that a great deal of time when into getting to your luxury home and the surrounding market. The pricing report should, ideally, discuss such details and statistics as absorption rate in the area and the price range so you can get a sense of how long homes in this price range reasonably take to sell.
Make sure your realtor has taken into account all of the features so important in the luxury market, from smart home features to the gourmet kitchen to entertaining outdoor spaces, steam showers, spa baths, hot tubs, water features, landscaping. Your agent might solicit the services of an appraiser who specializes in luxury or custom homes simply to get a gauge or touchstone for pricing.
Pros And Cons Of Selling Your Home To A Real Estate Investor
If you have a home listed for sale, chances are you’ve either noticed the abundance of roadside signs that read, “We Buy Homes Fast!” or perhaps you’ve even received an offer to purchase your home from a real estate investor. The real estate market has changed dramatically over the last decade, and it’s becoming more and more common for a typical home seller to encounter investors. But if you’re like most home sellers, this may be your first experience dealing with investors. So, what are the pros and cons of selling to an investor?
Pros of Selling to Real Estate Investors
- Flexible Payment Options – Investors may offer various payment methods such as certified funds, cash, pre-scheduled cash payments, or perhaps they may even take over the existing mortgage completely. With multiple options available, sellers may find a solution that suits their needs.
- Cash Offers – Quite often, investors are willing to pay cash for a home. With the recent tightening of financial restrictions, coupled with the growing number of complaints about low appraisals, having a cash buyer has become even more appealing.
- Selling “As Is” – Typically, investors offer to purchase a property “as is,” many times sight unseen. As a seller, that allows you to avoid costly repairs that would normally be considered your financial responsibility.
- Fast Closings – Some investors can close within seven days. How is that possible? Because the sale of the property is not reliant on approved financing, appraised values, home inspections, or the like, bypassing all of these steps expedites the process considerably.
Cons When Selling to Real Estate Investors
- Investors Do Not Need a License to Buy – This means as the seller, you know nothing about the person/entity offering to buy your home. Some investors are corporations, but some are individuals who just happen to also be real estate agents. This is cause for concern for many sellers because they question the motive behind the purchase; do they want to buy my home to resell it for more?
- There are Plenty of Scam Artists Posing as Investors – There’s a risk of fraud in any financial transaction. Still, it’s especially critical to avoid scams when dealing with your largest asset. To avoid any issues, get the name of the investor and do research online to see who they are, ask for references, look them up with the Better Business Bureau, and ask your listing agent to do some research on your behalf.
- Homeowners Will Likely Sell Below Market Value – Investors have their costs to contend with, and you can be assured that those costs will be factored into their offered price. Investors are also aware of the power behind their cash offer and the fact that they are taking a risk by purchasing “as is.” They may be relying on your motivation to get out quickly. Whatever the reason, it is unlikely that an investor will pay market value for a home in its peak condition.