While the same basic principles of great real estate practices will always be the same, there’s an enormous gulf in the difference between the process of selling a luxury home and a regular home.
Although the two processes will ultimately try to achieve the same end goal — to sell a home for the highest price possible in the shortest amount of time — selling a luxury home requires a significantly higher attention to detail than an everyday listing.
At the Christensen Real Estate Group, we have extensive experience selling luxury homes across Toronto and the GTA and know exactly what it takes to help our clients successfully sell their luxury properties.
To learn more about our process and how we consistently earn our luxury clients top results, read through our luxury home selling guide here.
The Approach To Pricing Luxury
As with any home sale, perhaps the most important element to get right is pricing. And, as you can imagine, the magnitude of formulating an effective pricing strategy becomes even more important when working with luxury homes.
At the end of the day, every home seller wants to achieve the highest possible return on investment for their homes, no matter if they’re a luxury seller or not. However, luxury real estate’s approach to pricing comes down to your Realtor’s® intrinsic understanding of the luxury buyer market.
It’s an absolute necessity that your agent is in tune with the climate of the local luxury market. While the greater real estate market might favour sellers over buyers or vice versa, the luxury market doesn’t always play by the same rules.
People with the capital to invest in luxury real estate often aren’t as affected by mass-market shifts, and knowing exactly what luxury buyers will deem under or overpriced plays a central role at this stage.
A seasoned luxury Realtor® will know how to run accurate Comparable Market Analyses, gather in-depth market research, and be in touch with the high-end real estate market in order to develop their luxury-geared pricing strategy.
Curious to see how your property compares to similar homes that are currently listed for sale? Have a look through the listings in your immediate neighbourhood by visiting our featured listings page, then sign up to get a professional evaluation of your home’s current market value.
What Luxury Looks Like
It might sound overly simplistic, but it’s vital that a luxury home truly looks like a luxury home when attempting to sell it. The term ‘luxury’ has different connotations in different markets. Some buyers associate luxury with lots of square footage, others high-end finishes, and for many, it’s all about location.
Whatever your luxury buyer target market’s main priorities are, it’s down to a luxury Realtor® to know about them and then showcase those features in their home preparations and marketing strategy. After professional cleaning, decluttering, and staging takes place, luxury Realtors® will get to work at capturing high-quality visual assets that highlight their listing’s most sought-after qualities.
Most commonly, these marketing assets include things like high-definition, real estate-focused photography and videography, a digital ‘highlight reel’ video, guided walkthrough videos, birds-eye-view drone imagery, and much more. The most important part of this stage is that a luxury listing’s best qualities are made immediately apparent to potential buyers from the get-go.
Our team of Realtors® has seasoned experience working within Toronto and the GTA’s luxury markets, but that’s just one of our advantages. To find out more about what makes the Christensen Group unique, visit our Why Work With Us? page here.
Capturing The Luxury Audience
It’s one thing for Realtors® to facilitate the production of all of these high-quality image and video assets, but they won’t be of any use unless their luxury target market actually sees them — and this is where a true luxury Realtor® earns their stripes.
Being able to position a luxury listing not just in front of as many potential buyers as possible, but the right calibre of potential buyers is how a listing will start to gain legitimate traction and interest within the luxury buyer market.
The key here is to know where the target buyer market is most likely to find the listing, as well as how to display the listing in front of them. Channels like luxury print and digital publications are a great start, as well as luxury real estate investor groups, meetings, and newsletters too.
Away from that, things like targeted ads can also be very effective marketing tools too. The idea is to know where your niche group of targeted buyers are most likely to be and focus on them instead of the general mass market. For the highest ticket luxury listings, this can mean looking to international markets as well as local markets for sourcing potential buyers.
Finding the right agent to help you sell your luxury home is paramount to your success. Learn more about Why Your Selling Agent Should Have Luxury Expertise here.
Working With A Luxury Agent
When working with a Realtor® that has comprehensive experience selling luxury homes, sellers who have also worked with regular listing agents should also notice some distinct differences in their in-person selling process as well.
Even in the digital world of today, the importance of a Realtor’s® people skills cannot be understated during luxury real estate transactions. A luxury Realtor® must be able to create personal interactions that instill a sense of confidence and trustworthiness with buyers.
To do that, luxury Realtors® often seek to create an atmosphere of exclusivity around their luxury listings. If a Realtor® can make their potential buyers feel important and special simply by being invited to see a luxury listing, they’ll be more likely to have a greater interest in purchasing the home.
How do Realtors® do that? Hosting private home showings and guided tours are both great tools. Similarly, hosting exclusive open houses for a tailored guest list of elite potential buyers is also effective at creating that atmosphere of importance.
The idea here is to portray the luxury home as a status symbol that can elevate a luxury buyer’s image and social standing, and using exclusive group tours can be very helpful with that.
Luxury homes deserve luxury attention and care. Learn more about the advantages of using a qualified full-service real estate team to help you sell your luxury home are, then see how our steps to selling a home compare.
