Never Mind The Price, Feel The Quality…

[Author – Tim ODwyer]

Recently I received a letter from a local real estate agency which is part of a major national franchise. The authors of this unsolicited correspondence were the agency’s sales manager and another person described as its “Area Specialist”.

Below is the full text of this letter. It will probably be familiar, because property owners all over Australia are regularly receiving listing and selling invitations like this from agents of all colours. But check out what is missing in this one: nowhere is there any indication on how much the agency would charge for finding “a buyer quickly” for my property. Or if there would be any fee at all. Ha! Ha!

“Dear Investor,

RE: Your investment property in Kingston

NOW IS A GOOD TIME TO SELL YOUR PROPERTY!

Some time ago I wrote to all property owners in your area regarding the real estate market and since our last letter the demand for properties has increased even further.

We have just sold a huge amount of homes and we now find we have an extreme shortage of properties for sale in all price ranges. That’s good news for you, if you’re thinking of selling. We should be able to find you a buyer quickly, and you may be pleasantly surprised with the current market price of your property.

We’re keen to find new listings to satisfy our current and future enquiries. Our extensive marketing plan, tested over the years, ensures that we receive genuine offers on almost all of our properties.

I have genuine buyers waiting now for the right property – wanting to purchase in your area, and that property could be yours. What this means to you is, owing to shortage of such properties on the market at present, we believe this could be an excellent opportunity to sell your home for a top price. CALL ME NOW!

If you are thinking of selling, I would welcome the opportunity to submit your property to these genuine purchasers. If you are interested in selling, or even taking advantage of our free market appraisal service, without disturbing your tenants, don’t hesitate – contact me today!

Yours faithfully,”

Fascinating, eh? Hope you weren’t too distracted by the grammatical inconsistency within a letter purportedly written by two people with not only a number of references to “we” but also the occasional “I” and “me”.

Don’t you love the opening statement (in capitals!) that now is a good time to sell your property? What real estate agent would claim otherwise? When you make your money selling other people’s properties, of course you would spout this to get listings.

Meanwhile, I wondered if there would be a difference between the pleasantly surprising “current market price” of my property and what is cutely described as “a top price”.

What really sticks in the throat is the agency’s shameless assertion that it has “genuine buyers waiting now” to whom it is keen to submit my property. Yet at the same time the agency should be able to “find” a buyer for my property quickly. Funnily enough, I don’t even own an investment property “in Kingston”.

Hopefully every other property owner in my area who received a letter like this promptly shoved it where it belonged – in the garbage bin.

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