The luxury real estate market has a special allure. You get to work with beautiful, high end homes, work and network with wealthy and influential people, and make higher commissions. But luxury listings need to be handled in a different way. These people have usually bought and sold several homes, so their needs are much different than first time buyers with modest budgets. These sellers are paying more (sometimes 10’s of thousands more), so you really need to justify your commission to them. Here are three things you need to remember when selling in the luxury home arena:
Service, Service, Service
The notion of customer service is even more important with luxury listings than normal ones. You’ll find this is true for most any industry. I recently had dinner at a high end steakhouse. I was struck by just how much more knowledgeable and attentive the server was than the servers you find at average restaurants. When people spend more money, they expect more in every way, and that includes service. So you need to do things above and beyond the call of duty for a real estate professional. If you’re the listing agent having an open house, have drinks and hor doerves for the visitors. Arrange for staging right away and pay for it yourself too, and don’t just wait to do it only when the house isn’t selling.
You should also have exceptionally good knowledge about what you’re selling. You should know every little detail about the home and have extensive knowledge about the neighborhood too. High end buyers are usually very discriminating and picky, so be prepared to patiently accommodate all their requests, however trivial or anal retentive they might seem.
Don’t Blow Your Budget Too Soon
Remember that the higher end the listing is, the longer it usually takes to sell it. So plan your marketing budget accordingly. You may not get your commissions for several months, so don’t run out of money before the home is sold. You may find using companies who do commission advances particularly useful when dealing with high end listings.
Just because you have a high end house doesn’t mean you should be paying high end dollars for services you’d need for average priced homes. A photographer or video tour company should still cost you roughly the same for luxury homes as for average priced homes.
Learn more about the subtleties and psychology of selling high end homes by taking my course Excelling In The Real Estate Profession. This course has been approved by the Registrar, REBBA 2002 to qualify for 9 credits.
There are some nice tips from you. Selling any luxury product can be really difficult – especially in time of economical stagnation. I think that nowadays it became less profitable to sell expensive real estates and next few months still could get more and more difficult. Everyone want to sell, but there is no one to buy… I think that if someone is thinking of starting own luxury homes selling business should reconsider and wait at least a year or year and a half, before the situation clarifies and become easier to make money.
For me the best way is to just have connections. If you know some wealthy people they might recommend you to their friends. Otherwise it might be pretty difficult to sell a luxury home.