How To Sell a Million Dollar Home in a Weekend
People have asked me for an update regarding the million dollar home I tried to sell during last weekend. Well, instead of giving you just a boring update...I want to share with you what I've learned. My hope is you can use what I learned... in marketing and selling your properties. But first, little background...
The home is worth $1.1M in a Lake Forest community in Illinois. It has 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms and over 4,900 square feet of living space. For the rest of the background, here's the posting on BP Marketplace:
Here are the results so far:
1. We were able to get 333 people attend our Open House last weekend (from 2-5 pm). That's almost 1 attendee a minute! It was crazy.
2. We received 21 offers from prospective buyers, some of which are cash offers with no contingencies.
The real estate agent who worked with me on this "property launch" called some of the prospective buyers as late as 9 PM last night to get a little "bidding war" going. The price has been BID up close to where I like it to be (not there yet...but pretty close). We will still make more phone calls today so I hope the price will be bid up to where I want it to be.
Regardless of the outcome, I want to share with you some of my secrets that enabled me and my real estate agent to get over 300 people (and over 20 offers) in an Open House when the average Open House is lucky to get 5 people. Here they are:
1.Put the property on the MLS. The MLS is a powerful marketing machine. Investors, don't be cheap. If you buy or control the property at the right price, paying the 6% commission is a small price to pay to get the house exposed to as many buyers as possible.
2. Give buyers' agents 4% commission. These are the ones who sell your house so reward them generously.
3. Massive marketing works. Massive marketing equals massive exposure. Massive exposure means massive amount of Open House attendees. Massive number of people walking through your house means massive number of offers. And massive number of offers means, you will likely sell your house.
4. Bandit signs is the best offline marketing for an Open House. The quality of attendees pulled by the bandit signs is not that good (meaning, they are lookers rather than serious buyers). But that's OK - getting a lot of people in the Open House created an atmosphere of "competitive bidding frenzy". We put out 100 bandit signs over 2 weekends.
5. With regard to online marketing, a lot of people who attended the Open House saw the property listing on Redfin.com.
6. Instead of listing your property at the highest possible price it can command, list it for half the market value. By doing so, you get into a multiple offer situation and the price will be driven upwards.
7. People procrastinate by nature. You have to give them an incentive to submit their offers by a certain deadline. We are giving away a Mercedes Benz SL as a BONUS. You don't have to give away such an expensive bonus. It was just appropriate since we are selling a million-dollar home. Maybe offer a BIG screen TV, or an iPad Air or something with high perceived value.
8. Put out marketing in multiple media. You don't know where your buyers are going to come from. We got calls and Open House attendees as a result of the following marketing media:
- the MLS, Craigslist, Facebook, Realtor.com, Zillow, flyers, and of course, Biggerpockets
9. Organize a good team to help you do this. I have a good real estate agent who basically did most of the work. I really helped out in the marketing. I got a mortgage broker involved who in turn got some of her people to help us out. I have the following team members:
- Greeter (she greeted the people walking through the door)
- 1st Floor, 2nd Floor and Basement "Tour Guides"
- Closer (the real estate agent who encouraged people to bid)
- Sergeant at arms or people who control the crowd and also acts as security
and
10. We gave people who attended the Open House the Comparable Market Analysis showing what the property is worth. This reminds them that they are getting a property at such a BIG bargain. We also gave them detailed Property Features' list so they will remember all the little details about the house when they leave. People commented that this Open House is so organized and professionally done.
Those 10 things above are the strategies that work in getting massive number of people in our Open House and we get a lot of offers as a result. I hope this is helpful BP Nation!