Choosing a luxury real estate agency, some advice to read…
It is not easy to choose the luxury real estate agency to which you could entrust a sales mandate... Some advice to help you choose your future luxury real estate agency before signing a mandate.
How to choose your luxury real estate agency?
The Properties de Charme site suggests some advice if you wish to entrust a sales mandate to a luxury real estate agency for your property. The idea is to give you some food for thought to help you better choose your future luxury real estate agency. Time is money as the saying goes, but when it comes to real estate sales, rushing can lead to bad decisions being made with disastrous financial consequences.
We do not choose a real estate agent in haste but by taking our time for a rational selection that will be effective for the future.
It is not necessarily easy to select which agency to entrust your property to because the choice is wide in brands which can be national, international, and completely independent local luxury real estate agencies.
It's not especially where everything shines where you will have the best service and the best listening.
The first piece of advice is not to get carried away and to take your time to study each of the websites of the target real estate agencies for which you could entrust a sales mandate.
If you are selling a castle, it is naturally preferable to entrust a mandate to a real estate agency which already has castles for sale because it is a safe bet that it already has an address book of buyers interested in castles. and that its advertising on the internet will also be targeted for this type of product.
If you are selling a private hotel, make sure that the agency already has one for sale.
You must therefore absolutely check that the luxury property you have for sale will in some way be part of the classic luxury properties that your future real estate agent will be used to managing and taking on under good conditions.
This first layer of elementary verification of the types of luxury properties offered by a real estate agency is not the only criterion because as a seller in a luxury real estate market that is certainly dynamic but where competition is also fierce between properties, you will quite naturally require your future real estate agent to be as responsive as possible and not to miss any contact or request for information that they may receive once the sales mandate has been signed.
Why not test the responsiveness of your future real estate agent?
Several avenues are possible: the first call at 9 a.m. if the agency opens at 9 a.m. and see if anyone responds to the switchboard as required; call at 7:05 p.m. to see if the agency has permanently closed its switchboard or if someone is still picking up.
Do the same by calling an agency employee on their cell phone to see if they pick up immediately.
Otherwise leave your phone number and see how long it takes to call you back.
Also use the contact forms on the real estate agency's advertisements to send a request for information about a property and see how long it takes for the real estate agency to respond to you.
Nowadays buyers do not wait, especially as potential foreign clients visit luxury properties for sale in France during their leisure or business trip with often little time available or some even come in France specifically just for a few days to buy a property and then you have to hit the mark and call them back immediately if they show interest in a property following an advertisement.
A potential buyer who falls for a real estate ad because it may correspond to his search criteria, his budget and because he liked the photos, likes to be answered immediately by telephone or by email within a short period of time. of just a few hours.
If your future real estate agent responds quickly on the phone or by email, this is a good sign because it is a sign that he will be responsive so as not to miss any of the contacts he may receive for your business.
Once you have selected one or two luxury real estate agents with whom you would like to work, you still have to consider the actual sale which involves signing a sales mandate.
In this regard we will come back later in another article on the differences between the non-exclusive sales mandate and the exclusive sales mandate and in particular the whole advantage of being able to entrust an exclusive sales mandate which can be a strong accelerator for the sale of your luxury property.
We will therefore talk below about the seller who entrusts his property to at least 2 real estate agencies on a non-exclusive basis.
There is no point in signing mandates in a hurry because the first step is to have an estimate given to you by the 2 real estate agencies with whom you would like to work because this will allow you to have a better idea of the value of your property to position a consistent selling price.
If the 2 estimates are roughly similar, you have no worries in having the professionals be theoretically well-equipped and have good knowledge of the luxury market to establish an estimated price for you in the market.
If, on the other hand, you notice a big difference between the estimate made by the first real estate agency and the second, you absolutely must investigate further and do not hesitate to question the 2 real estate agencies, each of which must justify the price of its estimate.
Even in luxury real estate agencies some may be tempted to give an estimate price to the owner likely to make him dream to ensure his benevolence especially to put all the chances on his side of having a signed mandate at all price.
For example, an agency valuing a castle at €1,000,000 and another agency at €1,200,000, the owner would be entitled to ask why such a difference?
When you are a seller you will probably be inclined to spontaneously follow the highest estimate of the real estate agent, saying to yourself that “if in the end he was right” and yet it is not necessarily the agency which will have estimated you your most expensive property who will be best equipped to sell it to you and who may have given you a deliberately biased estimate at the start with the hope that it will be her that you choose.
The question of price positioning for one or more sales mandates is crucial because the success of the operation will depend on the initial positioned price.
The right price and the one which will come closest to the expected final negotiated price must be considered with a negotiation margin which must remain reasonable so that the property retains all its attractiveness on the market and not an excessive negotiation margin which affects immediately the image of the property.
Everything sells, unfortunately many beautiful properties sometimes remain on the sales market for several years due to poor initial estimates, a bad pricing strategy put in place at the start of marketing which broke the product instead of making it attractive. .
Some will retort that the price does not matter because it is a unique property, the wealthier buyers themselves are often more aware of market prices than the sellers' own owners because they visit and sometimes numerous properties according to their criteria before deciding to buy one and in this sense they immediately or at least over a short period of time have fairly good visibility of what is offered on the luxury market and at what price !
Buyers are often better equipped than owners to identify the market price of a property because they most often visit properties which have the criteria they are looking for and in this sense have concrete means of comparison following their visits.
Once you have decided on a sale price, signing the sales mandate is not the most complicated thing because nowadays everything is done electronically.
The point for you to be vigilant at this stage is not to entrust your property to numerous real estate agencies who would advertise your property at different prices.
It is preferable that the presentation prices of your property are harmonized between all your agents. This avoids small conflicts of interest which can arise between real estate agencies and at least things are clear vis-à-vis the market and buyers and you. Are you also clear with all your agents, that the best sells!
To conclude this article on the choice of real estate agencies to sell your luxury property with one last relevant piece of advice, you should know that the multiplication of mandates with numerous real estate agencies is not a good strategy because scarcity has to be paid for and if your property is distributed everywhere it loses its splendor and buyers are even entitled to question “Why has the owner entrusted his property to so many agencies? Because she has difficulty selling herself? Is the owner too expensive and does he think that by giving multiple mandates he will increase his chances of selling? »
So it is much preferable to entrust your luxury property to only two real estate agencies to begin with and after a few months possibly consider opening to a third real estate agency.
In any case, the local real estate agency should not be neglected. Naturally, potential buyer clients looking in your geographic area can also turn to the local real estate market and its stakeholders to see what they have in their portfolio and are not specifically content to only audit the portfolios of big names and major brands known to luxury real estate.
For your luxury real estate you must of course entrust one or two mandates to luxury real estate agencies known and recognized nationally and internationally, but do not hesitate to explore local real estate agencies to see which one could possibly present your property.
