Selling luxury properties such as $2.3 million mansions, $4.4 million villas, and other high-end properties involves specific sales and marketing techniques.
Some real estate agents believe they are qualified to sell these types of properties based on their experience selling lower-value homes.
However, when they begin to realize that it is not so easy to contact potential clients, the first thing they think is that the property is overvalued or there is no demand market at that time.
These real estate agents don't understand that their problem often lies in their approach and the methods they use to reach potential clients. What would you think if I told you that selling a luxury property is relatively easier than selling a regular property? You probably wouldn't believe me.
Well, it's like this: it's relatively easier. I use the word "relatively" because selling luxury properties is a specialization within real estate sales.
For a specialist, selling these types of properties is easy; for everyone else, it's a real challenge. Selling luxury real estate isn't a skill you acquire by selling other types of residential properties; it requires learning from a professional who has specialized in this area. Let's see why.
To sell luxury real estate, you must specialize
Specializing in these types of multi-million dollar properties is necessary, because first of all you need to know how to advise owners who are selling luxury properties, which is the most difficult part of this type of sale.
Secondly, you need to know how to prepare a luxury property before putting it on the market (and I'm not referring to home staging techniques here).
Third, you need to know what promotional material and media are best for marketing luxury properties; and fourth, you need to have contacts in the circles where your target audience moves.
All of the above boils down to mastering these 4 tricks of selling luxury real estate:
1. Know what you're selling. Before putting a luxury property on the market, you must know it very well. You should prepare a dossier for the property with its physical, legal, financial, and commercial characteristics.
This dossier is the tool you need to convince the owner of the best price to sell their property, not the best starting price, but the price at which they should sell their luxury property.
A price you'll know how to defend, because once you've completed the dossier, you'll know what the right price is. This knowledge and conviction will help you later in negotiations with the buyer.
Preparing these types of documents with photos and video included is not easy, it takes time (between 2-3 weeks), and you need to have a bit of a budget.
This dossier is essential for selling a luxury property and from it you can extract your entire commercial strategy since it will tell you who your ideal potential client is, which is not precisely everyone who can afford to buy that property.
Every property has something that stands out, something truly unique and desirable to some. That's what will tell you who your ideal client is.
There are hundreds of these ideal clients in the market, so if you know how to create an "avatar of your ideal client" you will sell these types of properties easily and quickly.
2. Know your target audience. To reach your potential customer, you must understand how they think, their needs, tastes, and preferences, as well as their lifestyle. Keep in mind that these types of buyers tend to be unconventional and have no financing issues.
To know who your most potential client is, you must be able to translate the characteristics of a luxury property into benefits such as prestige, belonging to a specific social group (those who play golf, those who own a yacht, those who take vacations here, etc.), social recognition, respect, privacy, exclusivity.
Only by knowing the property well can you write a description of the property that does it justice, justifies its price, and is attractive to that target audience.
I recommend that you do not take the photos or video before writing this description, because the description will tell you how to take those photos and how to record the video.
How to capture the exclusivity that this property offers. And knowing how to capture or photograph exclusivity isn't easy.
Generally, location, available space, and the quality of materials are the characteristics you should focus on to reap the benefits.
Above all, to extract a benefit that makes the property unique for a specific group of people.
Remember also that every luxury property, once acquired, will undergo minor renovations to adapt it to the personality of its new owners.
The needs of this type of client are different from most people, and they seek a new home that offers certain personal benefits that reflect the success of the potential buyers.
Here, the number of rooms or the price are of little importance. What matters is that the property touches your heart, that it makes you fall in love.
3. Promote your luxury property with video
Obviously, to sell a luxury property you need top-quality materials and to promote it through the right channels. A memorable description and photos taken by a professional photographer aren't enough. You need a video, and you need to film it properly. The video is key.
You must record the typical high-quality technical video including a person in it who describes the property (its characteristics and benefits) as they show it.
Using background music while showing different parts of the property is a waste of time for three reasons: it doesn't capture attention; it's boring and unremarkable; it doesn't inspire; and it doesn't convey success or exclusivity. Furthermore, when uploaded to YouTube, you can't optimize it because it lacks internal text that allows for search engine optimization, translation, and subtitles. Finally, without a direct call to action, you might get many views, but few inquiries.
Once you have the video hosted on YouTube or Vimeo (it's another option, although I recommend both), you need a specific landing page for this luxury property.
This landing page should include photos, a description, a video, an inquiry form, and be very well designed. This is the landing page where you will direct your potential customers.
Once you have all the materials, it's time to select the appropriate channels. The best channels for selling a luxury property include, among others, real estate public relations, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, specialized websites (online luxury magazines, etc.), and native real estate advertising.
To get quality information requests on Google and Facebook, you need to know very well how to select keywords and target audience.
For real estate portals and websites, you need to know real estate copywriting to write memorable ads. The description you have isn't appropriate for advertising.
4. Use public relations to sell quickly.
Most luxury properties, and almost all ultra-luxury properties, are sold through real estate public relations. Therefore, you need to specialize and learn that it's not simply about giving press conferences and writing articles, but about gaining access to the circles where your clients are.
Once you make yourself known in these circles (and once you have sold some luxury properties), you will find that several clients, through referrals or thanks to your PR efforts, entrust you with the search for a specific property.
To succeed in selling luxury real estate, you need training in real estate public relations, which is slightly different from that in other sectors. This training is part of your specialization.
