Auckland real estate agent Tama Emery and his vendors are taking a gamble. The listing for the house they are selling in South Auckland is short on details, and deliberately so.
There are no listing photos for the three-bedroom house and no address. Interested buyers are instructed to register for a one-off private tour of the property on September 10.
“Meeting point will be the Harcourts Papakura Office and you will be chauffeured to the property. Your tour guide will provide personalized insights and answer any questions during the tour,” said Emery’s listing on OneRoof.
It’s all very mysterious. In fact the listing promises a “mystery box experience”.
Start your property search
Emery told OneRoof his vendors wanted their home to catch the attention of buyers. “It’s fully renovated, not a new build. It’s furnished, it’s lovely, it’s got all the bells and whistles,” he said.
Discover more:
- Revealed: The hidden costs of buying a luxury home in NZ - could you afford a $100,000 rates bill?
- ‘Yuck’ South Auckland home back on the market after unbelievable transformation
- Overseas owners of quake-damaged home get $1m surprise
“The question wasn’t, ‘How much can we sell it for?’ It was, ‘With hundreds of other properties on the market in Papakura, how do we make it stand out?’.”
His vendors had seen other marketing gimmicks, like free cars or $1 reserve auctions, but they wanted to do something different.
Emery and his manager latched onto an inside-the-box idea. “We were talking about the $10 mystery boxes you can buy from the pharmacy, and thought, ‘Let’s just pop the house in a box and sell it’.”
However, turning the idea into reality wasn’t easy. It took nearly a month to work out the mechanics of the offer, as he consulted with bank managers, brokers and other experts.
Harcourts agent Tama Emery wants his clients' three-bedroom house to stand out. Photo / Fiona Goodall
The listing ad includes a floor plan of the house. Photo / Supplied
“At first there was a lot of resistance, how are people supposed to buy with no pictures? If you don’t give them an address? There’s no public marketing whatsoever,” he said. “When you turn up to buy, you’ve got to be safe about it.”
Instead of the usual photos, the listing for the property shows a mystery box and ribbon – in enticing Tiffany blue – and an invitation to the Mystery Box Experience.
“This Mystery Box will provide a unique and engaging experience for those embarking on the journey of home ownership,” the listing on OneRoof said.
The only clue to the house is a floorplan, which shows two bedrooms and a bathroom on the ground floor, along with living room and kitchen, and a third bedroom on the upper floor. The property also has a single garage, storage and two decks, and is on a cross-lease site.
The listing also offers clues to the price – it has a rental estimate of $670-$690 a week – and states the home is a three-minute walk to the town centre.
Emery said that once buyers were at the property, they would get the usual package of property information, LIM reports and council files to share with their finance professionals, lawyers, valuers or building inspectors.
The auction is slated for September 26. “The event is about creating experience for the buyers to feel comfortable with the property, to explore it and imagine themselves in it. And then at the auction itself, people see other people [bidding] and there is that social proof.”
So far, the risky strategy is paying off: after only a day on the market, Emery said he has had enquiries from four agents (he is doing conjunctionals with other agencies), a broker and, most importantly, two would-be buyers.
And while Emery is excited about the campaign, he admitted to OneRoof that it was a challenge to his usual way of selling property.
“The hardest part for me is that agents usually talk about the property and show you pictures and videos and all that. But for this campaign I cannot, and that is a struggle.”
- Tama Emery's Mystery Box home can be viewed on September 10. It goes to auction on September 26
