‘People’s data’: Real estate agent reveals reality behind hated selling tactic
An Aussie real estate agent has lifted the lid on an annoying price guide tactic used in the industry and how he uses the “fear of missing out” to find buyers.
An Australian real estate agent has lifted the lid on what goes on behind the scenes in the industry, including why using one hated selling tactic has become so prolific.
In the past 12 months, Harcourts Newcastle real estate agent Josh Lloyd has sold approximately 58 properties, according to online sales data.
He recently appeared on an episode of the Australian Property Show podcast, hosted by property expert Tom Haigh, and revealed what it really takes to sell a home and the tricks agents use to ensure they get the best price possible.
During the episode, the topic of price guides came up, specifically, the fact that so many properties are listed without a visible price these days.
Anyone who has ever scrolled through listings on Realestate.com.au or Domain will have noticed that, more often than not, in the area where a price should be listed will be “contact agent”, “price guide on request”, or simply “auction”.
It is something that has become a major pet peeve of buyers who are irritated by the fact they have to go through an extra step in an already laborious process purely to figure out if a home is within their budget.
A quick search on social media shows multiple Aussies slamming the increasingly common tactic.
MORE: Huge prediction for Aussie house prices
“Why is this a thing? It drives me nuts. The seller and REA know exactly what they want. Why can’t they just provide a price range?” one person questioned.
“Just a rant. It really annoys me that agents elect not to provide ANY price guide at all. I have no idea if it’s a $1m or $3m property,” another wrote.
One person said they were “amazed” at how many properties were simply listed as ‘auction’ with no price guide available.
“What’s the go here, am I meant to contact the agent for every single house to get a price guide or just show up at the auction with no idea of the value? Am I missing something?” they said.
Another buyer even went as far as to say they ignore properties that do not have a price listed, stating, “Not stuffing around with that.”
MORE: Home loan trap taking years to escape
According to Mr Lloyd, not listing a price is essentially one of the ways real estate agents ensure they get the “best result” for the seller.
He revealed that for the first week a property is on the market, he won’t have a price guide publicly advertised.
However, when a person sends a request, they will get an automatically generated email that includes the price guide.
Essentially, it comes down to gathering data.
“Say we are selling $1 million house that we think is worth $1 million. I want to gather the buyers between $920,000 and $1.1 million who are interested in that house because, if we are wrong, I want to have those people’s data so that we can go back out to them if we do establish that we have overpriced it for whatever reason,” Mr Lloyd said.
He believes what really irritates people is when there is no guide available at all, even via an online request.
“Typically that will really annoy a buyer,” he said.
“We always give them a guide. It is just in that initial week I want to protect my owners to make sure I have all of the data I need if we have got it marginally wrong.”
If they come to the conclusion that they have overpriced the property, then Mr Lloyd is able to reach out to those buyers who had a lower budget than what they were initially asking for.
For potential buyers who want to get around the no price guide issue, there is a way to do it without having to reach out to the agent.
Mortgage broker and former buyer’s advocate, Kobe Clarke-Jacobs, recently made a video explaining an easy hack you can use to get around this annoying issue.
“When you’re on your laptop, open up realestate.com.au on the property that you’d like to check out,” she said.
“If you have a Mac, we need to go Command-Option-U. It will bring up all this background coding, which we don’t need to know about.
“If you then do Command-F, or Control-F on a Windows computer and type ‘marketing’, it will then bring up a little price range.”
This is a figure that is entered by the real estate agent when the property is listed so it will still appear in searches where people enter a specific price range for an area.
During the interview, Mr Lloyd also revealed another common tactic agents use before they even officially put a property on the market.
Sometimes before listing a property, agents will organise what is known as an off market showing, which is where they using their existing database of potential buyers and invite them to look at the property.
Mr Lloyd said they average about 10 to 15 people at a database showing and, if there is someone in that group that wants to buy the home he then has an “incredible degree of leverage”.
He explained he then tells the interested party that they will “not be buying a bargain” and they will have to make an offer that is enough for him to take back to the owner and confidently recommend they stop the whole marketing process on their behalf.
More Coverage
“I have got the capacity to then leverage the fact that it’s not on the open market,” Mr Lloyd said.
“You talk about the fear of missing out, people who are coming through a database open home are on our database because they have been to other open homes so typically they have missed out and they don’t want to keep missing out.
“So they go ‘Oh bugger it, I will pay the extra $20,000. I just want to buy it, I am sick of it.”
