Know the real value of your property

Know the real value of your property

If you are a Seller and your home has not sold within a window period appropriate for a specific price range it may be time to take a step back, remove the myopic glasses you have potentially been wearing and critically evaluate your property.

A benefit an agent provides to a Seller is that they see the property from a typical buyer's perspective. For most Sellers, this is a very difficult thing to achieve. One of the great lessons you will learn as a marketing student is how to avoid Marketing Myopia - a term coined by late Harvard Business School marketing professor, Theodore Levitt, which describes how company directors/sellers adopt a near-sighted focus on selling products and services, rather than seeing the "big picture" of what consumers want.

Most property developers are intensely myopic in this regard which is why we see properties being built without professional interior design input where an architect has been paid a low base fee to duplicate designs without careful consideration of kitchen and bathroom designs and how living spaces integrate.

There is a very good reason we have an interior design industry separate from the architectural work. If you think you cannot afford a good interior designer, then consider the suggestion that you cannot afford not to employ an interior specialist. Almost every week we will walk into a developer's property where we want to cry in response to the lack of intelligent interior design employed.

The lower end of the price spectrum is more guilty of this. Great design - in and out, is one of the finest selling features a developer can employ.

For unsold homes, the first step is to remove the obvious deal killers. These could be an uncooperative tenant who makes access difficult for viewings or does not present the home in a neat way. Damp areas or signs of water ingress is another immediate turn off to buyers and should be remedied by sellers using professional specialists who can provide a product and workmanship guarantee on their work. General cleanliness is important and extends to the landscaping of a property. An untidy garden or yard implies an untidy home and ensures a buyer will be on high alert to look for problems.

Once the deal killers are eliminated, the price should be scrutinized. A home is never worth the cost of the property plus improvements plus some notion of time value return to the seller. The market will regard as irrelevant what has been spent on a property but only what value it presents now. Many people who bought at the peaks of the property market in 2007 or again in 2015 are unlikely to see those prices again for a period. The best guide to current market-related pricing is what several other similar properties have traded at. The prices other properties are listed at is completely irrelevant. The only thing that matters is finalized and transferred sales. Not just one or two, but several across a price range.

FNB's latest Property Barometer Report indicates the length of time on the market for the average property in South Africa has lengthened from 8 weeks to 8 weeks and 6 days. Regionally KZN has shown an increase by 2 weeks where market sentiment and market activity has deteriorated more than in the other provinces. The reasons people are selling is interesting as Emigration is a reason more relevant as the price spectrum increases and moving for safety and security reasons is now twice as important in KZN (11%) than the Western Cape (5%). Downscaling due to financial pressure (19%) remains high. Downscaling with life-stage remains as the top reason (23%) for people selling.