Brad Shipway Case Study 1

Property case study: 

The seller of this townhouse at 217 Murphy Road, Geebung contacted me after he was impressed with the way I helped my clients sell their homes for more in less time by using my effective and efficient marketing and negotiating techniques (we’ll get to that later). 

The seller here was trying to sell his townhouse on Murphy road for the highest price, so he could get enough to settle somewhere “nicer” (doesn’t mean better). 

When he chose me to help him sell his property, I was super energized, because I knew we'd make a great bang on the marketplace.

So we went on together to craft the whole selling plan. 

Challenges: 

It wasn’t long before my excitement slowly faded because once I stepped into the house, I  realized selling this townhouse would be harder than selling a white elephant to the circus. 

Here’s the kicker… 

• Inferior condition 

Not that “spooky haunted house” type stuff, but the townhouse was in poor-quality.  A bit of a funny smell, weird water stains, dented walls and doors and more.  Enough to make any first-time buyer’s skin crawl. 

• A similar property price dropped 

The owner began to worry about his dream price when we saw a similar townhouse a couple of doors down with another agent launched online and went downhill quickly from $365,000 to $355,000 to $344,000. 

You can bet we were shaking in our shoes when we saw the final sale price of $344,000.

• The tenants still living in the property 

The owner still had tenants living in the townhouse, so he wondered “should we wait or weed them out?” 

The approach: 

Even though all these challenges were working to break my spirit, I didn’t give any of them a shot because years of working in real estate have taught me… 

It would take 100% commitment on my part if I wanted to get the seller’s dream price to come true. 

The owner, his expectations were still running hot but he was being very cooperative, thus making the whole selling process easier. 

I mean what could be more powerful than the 100% commitment of both agent and seller? 

So, rather than just accept the miserable outcome ahead of us, I pulled out a time-tested and proven method that brought the owner the best offer in less time. 

There is nothing better for a seller than having options to choose from!!! Here’s how we did it… 

1. Dealing with the tenants 

Tenants were the first thing we dealt with because no matter how pretty the house is… an uncooperative tenant will always be a big roadblock to pass the inspection test. 

Just imagine… 

You are interested in a house, you want to inspect it, but when you step in you see a tenant sitting his ass on a couch while licking Dorito dust off his fingers. Would you still be interested in buying that house?  (This isn’t quite what happened here, but you get the idea)

Exactly. 

When dealing with tenants, it’s NOT always about whether to wait or weed them out. We made them allies, not a burden.

We had a sit down to let them know of our plan and told them to keep the house in as close to show condition as possible. We also gave them plenty of notice before the upcoming open house, so they could prepare the house with less stress ahead of time without risking the seller losing any money. 

It did make us more flexible with our marketing, but the effort was definitely worthwhile.

2. Capturing Photos

We wanted to have attention-grabbing photos that would cut through the marketing noise of similar competing properties. As always, the best way to do this is to use a professional, but not just any photographer - a photographer hand picked by us. 

I always use professionals because, no matter how expensive they are, their shots are well worth the money; in terms of clarity, colour saturation, and brightness because they only use top of-the-line equipment rather than the smartphones that the cheap agents use. 

Often there are a few things I tend to ask my photographer to make sure the photos show the lifestyle and portray the house in a positive light. Yeah, I can be a little fussy and demanding sometimes - but I do trust them as this isn't the first time I've used them and I've seen them do a fine job before. 

The photos came back and they were just gorgeous. 

3. Social media lunch 

We got everything needed to launch the marketing campaign, but to make sure we attract as many buyers that match our property’s criteria, we always start with social media, specifically Facebook and Instagram ads with first-time buyers as our main target. 

But since our goal is to attract as many buyers as possible, we generally use every place where the buyers might hang out, such as: 

• major real estate portals 
• agency website 
• local area flyers
• Youtube
• Google

The results are in: 

Just 1 week after we ran the social campaign that consisted of over 20 Social Media (Facebook, and Instagram) enquiries received.

We already managed to achieve our desired result with a contract signed for $359,000. That means the owner received $15,000 more while spending less on marketing than the townhouse a few doors down. 

I’m telling you… when the owner saw the price and realised how stress free the process was, he was more than happy.

Testimonial: 

Here’s what the owner had to say about our selling experience…