Julie Hodgson has had some tough sales in her real estate career, but perhaps none more so than 6 Blackbourn St, Granville.
A well maintained, high-set, post-war home in Queensland’s Maryborough region, the three-bedroom, one-bathroom, weatherboard home should have been a cinch to sell.
And initially it was, twice going under contract before the deal fell over each time at the 11th hour.
“This property went under contract twice, and both times it did fall due to finance,” the Century 21 Platinum Agents sales executive explains.
“Initially, there was no way we expected two contracts to fall, or for this home to take as long as it did to sell.”
Julie says the property was in the first-homebuyer and investor price bracket, sitting neatly under $400,000, which was a rarity in the area these days, especially as the property was well maintained.
To start with, the campaign ran smoothly, with traditional marketing methods employed, including a signboard at the front of the property, both ground and drone photography, online marketing, social media boosts, listings on portals such as view.com.au, letterbox drops and open homes.
“The price range at this home sat at under $400,000 and there’s not many left in that price bracket anymore,” Julie says.
“It’s the price bracket they (first-homebuyers) can still afford and the first two contracts we had on the property were just that.”
A tricky listing
Julie says she takes a hybrid approach towards marketing each property she lists, using a broad range of mediums to attract buyers.
Frustrated when contracts on Blackbourn St fell over, Julie knew she had a battle on her hands.
She says the property had been on the market about 60 days, numbers at open homes had drastically dwindled and the exclusive agency agreement had expired.
“I spoke to the wife of the couple that owned it and she was not willing to let her husband know at that stage that the listing, our listing, had actually expired,” Julie says.
“I did ask that she give me another couple of weeks and, while she didn’t want to resign, she did decide to give me another couple of weeks to try marketing the property in other ways before looking at potentially going to an open listing.”
Julie says the other issue making the sale tricky was the vendors remaining firm on the price they would accept for the property.
“The other challenge I had was, I was getting offers around the $380,000 mark, and it had appraised in the mid-$380,000s to early $400,000s, but I couldn’t get the owners to budge on price at all,” she notes.
A new approach
As well as continuing with traditional marketing methods, Julie offered the vendor the Century 21 Edge (C21 Edge) online marketing solution.
C21 Edge extends and increases audience engagement through a comprehensive media strategy that includes social, display ads and native ads to ensure potential buyers and sellers are found whenever and wherever they are online.
While Century 21 agents know the platform as C21 Edge, it is powered by view.resi’s off-portal performance product called Acquire.
A white label product, Acquire can be customised with the agency’s brand, to keep its presence at the forefront of its marketing efforts
Not only are listings featured on view.com.au, they are also amplified across social media channels and other, targeted, digital platforms and placements.
“I explained to the vendor how C21 Edge online marketing worked and the effectiveness we had seen just in the early days of using this form of marketing,” Julie says.
“It’s quite clever, it operates in the background and the algorithm pushes the listing through to websites where the right buyers are.
“It knows what buyers have been looking at and then they will get these ads appear in front of them regardless of where online they’ve been looking.
“It’s not just on social platforms, but other websites too.”
A reinvigorated campaign
Julie says the vendor agreed to use C21 Edge and another open home was held straight away.
“This proved to be incredibly effective,” she says.
“Prior to that type of marketing, I’d only had two, maybe three groups coming through open homes, but the open homes I conducted directly after the C21 Edge campaign I was getting anything up to 10 or 12 groups coming through and it went under contract not long after that and … we were successful in gaining a contract at the asking price of the home.”
Julie notes that the successful buyer was moving to the area from the Sunshine Coast and the listing was pushed to her on an off-portal website.
“I think the benefit of using C21 Edge is that it (the listing) is going to a broader audience than what traditional platforms reach,” she says.
“The traditional platforms rely on people going to that website, whereas this type of advertising is your unconscious buyer, or people that have been looking but have not seen the ad through traditional platforms.
“It’s more or less placed in front of them.”
The lessons learnt
Julie says one of the biggest lessons she learnt from the campaign for 6 Blackbourn St, Granville, is to qualify buyers more succinctly, particularly those putting in offers and going to contract.
“We’re also definitely in an era of the Sunset Clause being used more on contracts,” she says.
“Obviously is not ideal for the buyer, but it is a useful tool, particularly when one contract has already fallen, to be able to keep marketing the property even though the contract process is underway.
“But the biggest lesson I’ve had from this particular property is to use as many different digital marketing platforms as possible, not just the traditional portals.
“Use your own company website to its fullest potential, boost posts on social media to maximise your reach and using programs such as C21 Edge really do have a different type of reach compared to what we traditionally have seen with online and digital marketing.”
