As the housing market gears up for spring, one Auckland agent is looking to get the jump on his competitors by offering potential sellers an all-expenses-paid trip to New York.
Barfoot & Thompson agent Luke Dallow, who sells in the prized inner-city suburb of Ponsonby, told OneRoof homeowners who book an appraisal with him will go into a draw for a holiday to the US. The sales tactic is already paying off.
“I launched the offer on Tuesday and by Thursday I had booked 14 appraisals,” he said.
“It’s a way to give back to the community and the real estate business. There’s a lot of noise out there, so what I’m trying to do is give a bit of value to the appraisal.”
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Sweeteners are fairly common in real estate. Earlier this month, OneRoof reported that West Auckland agent Ronald Hachache, owner of the Ray White North West franchise, will give the buyer of his investment property in Massey an all-expenses-paid trip to Fiji.
Dallow said that around half of the homeowners he’s doing appraisals for are genuinely planning to put their houses on the market in the spring, with the remainder looking ahead to the next 12 or 24 months or testing the water.
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"The market has been quite interesting this year and people just want to see where their property sits in the current environment,” he said.
He said requests for appraisals had come from across Auckland, not just Ponsonby, and were for homes with price points between $1.5m and $3.5m.
“The sweet spot is definitely circa $2m," he told OneRoof.
“Some people are accepting of these prices, but know that when they buy the bigger house, they can do better,” he said, adding that in some cases he has to be frank about prices that might not be what homeowners had been hoping for, particularly for people who bought during the market peak.
“I’m giving them the reality. They’ll tell me their journey and I’ll make a professional assumption of what they should do – hold or sell.”
The agent said that the enticement to get people to act had come after a quiet winter when people had been “just sitting on their hands for far too long, just wondering, wondering,” he said.
And despite owning high-value properties, Dallow said many of his inner-city clients would still love the free trip. “They’ve got big mortgages, a lot of debt and not that much spare cash. So, yeah, for a free trip, they’re going, ‘We’ll go one step further.' It’s a great destination,” he said.
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