To quickly sell an apartment more expensively, it often only takes a few steps. We present a guide on how to successfully sell a property. With some small changes, it is possible to get a much higher price. In the article we will highlight:
How to create a good property listing
The first question to answer is where to advertise the sale of our property. Nowadays, it is possible to find dozens or even hundreds of portals with property sale offers. It is worth putting yourself in the buyer’s shoes and thinking about where you would look for an advert yourself. The vast majority of those interested in buying property go to portals such as Otodom or OLX.
Unfortunately, where there are the most seekers, there are also the most property listings, so as sellers we have considerable competition. It becomes important to manage the position of the offer in the services, for which various tools for promotion of offers can be used. Adequate promotion of the listing helps to reach a larger audience, which translates into greater interest and thus faster sales.
However, using all the promotional options available means a considerable expense, so a promotional campaign should be created thoughtfully. How do you choose the right promotion for your offer? Here, unfortunately, there is no golden advice. Experts’ marketing strategy usually results from extensive experience and observation of the market, as its individual sectors are characterised by specific features affecting the way offers are promoted.
How to take good real estate photos
It is estimated that when browsing through property listings, viewers focus as much as 80% of their attention on photos. It can therefore be said that well-crafted photos are the key to an attractive listing. How do you take good photos of a property? First and foremost, you need to focus on aspects such as the right framing, composition, lighting, exposure or the right angle to give a spatial idea of the room.
When taking real estate photos, it is important to remember the correct camera settings, such as white balance and aperture settings. It is a good idea to take several photos from the same perspective, using a variety of settings. This results in a better end result during post-processing of the photos, achieved, among other things, through the play of light and colour.
What is Home Staging and what are its advantages
Home Staging is still a novelty on the Polish market and only a few offers show actions taken in this direction. What is Home Staging then? The simplest way to explain the term is that it means all activities preparing a property for sale.
It is worth remembering that first impressions play a key role, which is why Home Staging focuses on them. This applies to both the preparation of photographs and the presentation itself. With properly prepared Home Staging, the property acquires a unique character and a unique presentation.
The first benefits are already obtained at the photo stage – more attractive photos attract more people interested in the property, allow it to stand out among hundreds of offers and, consequently, speed up the sales process. The world’s pioneer of home staging, Barbara Schwarz, proves in her research that proper preparation of a property can achieve up to a 10% higher property price and reduce the time to sell by up to 40%.
The second stage influenced by Home Staging is the presentation of the property. Most clients make decisions almost as soon as they cross the threshold of the flat. What is important is how the interested party feels in a given space.
The range of activities covered by the broad term Home Staging is still controversial, where the ‘beautification’ of a property ends and a major renovation begins. In order to take care of a property and increase its attractiveness, attention should be paid to both completely basic activities, such as general tidying and surface aesthetics, as well as activities that are a little more complicated.
It is worth considering furnishings that affect the value of the property and getting rid of items that ‘clutter’ it. The brightness, cleanliness and functionality of the space are among the first factors reviewed by interested parties. Minor technical work is well received, as ‘freshly replaced electrical sockets’ add value as opposed to a list of faults to be repaired.
Home Staging is also a range of activities that constitute the “art of finishing”. Adequate sunlight in the property, a pleasant smell in the rooms or small decorations filling empty spaces are examples of tricks used by Home Stagers to increase the attractiveness of a property.
Home Staging is worth considering not only when the property has not been generating the expected interest for some time. The described activities translate into measurable benefits. It is worth bearing in mind that we are talking about practices requiring both larger financial outlays and sometimes very small investments. Nevertheless, these investments translate into a profit far exceeding the costs incurred.
Knowledge of market trends
The real estate market is a place where several to a dozen very similar offers appear every day. Thinking about the scale of the entire local property market, this means dozens of offers that are in direct competition with the offer you are preparing. So how do you stand out in the property market? Thanks to knowledge of trends and a properly prepared campaign to promote the ad, it is possible to shorten the sales process considerably.
Knowing the current prices on the market will allow you to put up an offer with the optimal price for the property. How to find the optimal price for a property? Sellers are keen to get the highest possible rate, but it is important to remember that the market is verified by demand, so too high a price will not encourage buyers. Too low, on the other hand, may cause regret that the earnings have fallen significantly short of expectations. One tool to carefully study the current rates achievable is the Transaction Price Map.
It allows you to observe the amounts in which properties have been sold recently. It is important to remember that offer prices do not usually coincide with transaction prices. The former may be inflated and be associated with high expectations of the sellers. Transaction prices, on the other hand, are the rates that were actually obtained when the property was sold.
However, the task is not so simple, because the values obtained, among other things, from the transaction register are historical values, which means that since transactions made just two months ago, property prices may have increased by up to a few percent. This is why specialists in the real estate market keep up to date with trends, which allows them to appropriately estimate the price obtainable for a given property.
3D visualisations
Although not everyone is aware of it, many people do not have a well-developed spatial imagination. When viewing a floor plan of a flat, we are not always able to visualise the interior depicted well. During the presentation of a flat, whether it is in a development state or one that requires extensive renovation, potential buyers often have trouble ‘developing’ the presented space in their mind.
With 3D visualisation, it is possible to obtain a three-dimensional model of the property, which will additionally be equipped with exemplary furnishings. Thus, we offer not only “four corners”, but also a virtual manual with a sample arrangement of the space to be sold.
With a sample interior design, a potential customer can be inspired to furnish a flat and, as a result, be persuaded to buy it. So realistic 3D visualisations definitely attract more attention from potential buyers, allowing them to convince themselves that this is the right flat for them.
Virtual tour
Virtual walk-throughs are becoming more and more popular than traditional forms of property presentation. However, offers allowing virtual walk-throughs are attributed not only to the prosperous interest of potential buyers, but also to the professionalism of the seller visible in the careful preparation of the property on display. According to Otodom data, offers containing a virtual walk-through generated as much as 50 per cent more enquiries from buyers compared to offers with only photos.
Some people claim that through a virtual walk-through, customers notice possible shortcomings or weaker aspects of a property more quickly, but it is worth considering whether we want to ‘sweep such things under the carpet’ or transparently encourage buyers to purchase the property.
In addition, in this way we take care of a very valuable asset of both parties to the transaction – time. Viewing a property through a virtual walk-through allows the first stage of verifying interest. The customer comes to the presentation of the property to make sure that it is actually as presented in the virtual walk-through, so we can count on a significantly shortened sales process.
What does it take to make a virtual walk-through? You will need a suitable camera or camcorder that takes 360-degree images, a tripod and a specialised application or software to process the prepared material and prepare a three-dimensional model.
Summary - how to sell a flat for more
Selling a flat is quite a complicated process, but with a little tweaking you can get a much higher price. Some of the tasks require specialist equipment or experience in the market, so when looking to get the optimum price for a property, it is worth considering help from experts.
