Agent Advice

The secret to real estate sales success in a buyer's market

The secret to success in a buyer's market is having a process to reintroduce your listing to potential buyers.

Andrew Duncan

Apr 8, 2024 — 4 min read

In a buyer's market, many properties won't sell in the first 3 weeks. In fact, many listings will take 60, or even 90 days to sell. Some will take 6+ months!

During that time on market you and your vendors will overcome various challenges: crashed offers, building inspection issues, consent problems, lack of buyer interest, over-pricing.

Eventually, if you work hard enough, you will reach a point where your listing is priced at an attractive level, and potential selling hurdles have been dealt with or appropriately disclosed. Unfortunately, by the time you get to this point, all the buyers have disappeared. The initial rush of interest has subsided and the property has now been on the market so long that buyers think their must be something majorly wrong.

The challenge is, most salespeople don't have a strategy to overcome this lack of interest, aside from updating the price online and hoping for the best.

In many cases, the exclusive period will expire and the owners will end up listing with another agent, only to sell within a few weeks on the market as they are now priced at the right level (thanks to you) and the fresh online listing has reintroduced the property to a new pool of buyers.

The secret to getting that sale yourself and earning the commission you deserve is to have a process to reintroduce your listing to the market throughout your marketing process.

The secret to success in a buyer's market: Having a process to reintroduce your listing to potential buyers.

When you secure a price reduction or major change to one of your listings, you need to be able to proactively notify:

Every single previous visitor of that property, whether they liked it or not, via phone or text (and email).
Every potential buyer who has visited a similarly priced property in the last 6 months, ideally via text.
Every single person on your database, as part of your regular email newsletter.

Ideally, you would be phoning, texting and emailing hundreds of potential buyers every time one of your listings has a significant change in it's marketing plan. This might happen 2, 3 or even 4 times throughout the marketing campaign. Keep at it until you secure a sale!

If you can do this regularly, you will sell more properties in a shorter period of time. You'll protect your vendor's price and avoid any potential of losing listings to your competition. Better still, being able to effectively demonstrate this process will help you secure more price reductions in the first place! Owners are more willing to meet the market if you can show them you have a process to generate competition if at all possible once they lower their price.

In a buyer's market, your database is an absolute goldmine. It's the key to increasing your income while properties are getting harder to sell, and while other agents are panicking, wondering where their next commission is going to come from.

Any good database system should let you find all previous open home visitors and send them a text message or email. If you can't do this currently, talk to your IT support person, manager, or company trainer. If they can't give you an answer, consider moving to a real estate office that has appropriate tools to help you succeed.

At the very least, make sure you save all your open home registers so you can do this the old fashion manual way - by making phone calls!