In some ways I wish I did not have the need to write this post – for the owners of the 20 acre farm in the Catlins I feel sympathy, they were looking to use innovate marketing to try and sell a property and move on to a new life – something many of us may wish for. However this is not going to happen (at least not today).
The $1 reserve auction for a tractor with the added bonus of a 20 acre farm thrown in has fallen through – the winning bidder denied the necessary financing. The owners now left to wonder what to do – naturally Trade Me is doing all it can to rally round and provide an audit trail of the winning bidder and try and secure interest from those that were outbid.
I have no wish to say “I could see that possibility eventuating” – but I did in my recent post highlight what I saw as vulnerabilities of property buying succumbing to the euphoria of novelty marketing.
What is very interesting is the attempted parallels between this online auction and a physical auction – the best intended attempts by Trade me to rustle up secondary bidders – the only difference here is that those bidders were bidding with full knowledge that the property was “on-the-market” and the reserve had been met – they judged that they had made their full and final bid – happy to let the winning bidder complete. It is not so easy to just try and turn the clock back and re-create the events of last week again.
This property and the tractor were not sold online and a 20 acre section of the Catlins is back on the market – the local Harcourt’s agent Kylie Anderson is happy to take enquiries.
The encouraging thing is the massive exposure for the property and a genuine interest in buying via auctions.
Best of luck to Kylie Anderson and her vendors
Mason
I am not sure that you can make the assumption that this online auction for a tractor on a $1 reserve is going to be a demonstration of genuine interest for auctions in general.
Tell me I am wrong, but from my perspective as I endeavoured to highlight in the prior post they are not the same at all.
Alistair – I’m not suggesting the $1 reserve online auction was going to sell the property. I don’t believe a “no reserve” or “$1 reserve” sales tool will ever achieve true value – it screams BARGAIN!(in my humble opinion)
I also feel the effort was innovative but -unfortunately- has proven itself to be unsuccessful.
I may not have stated it clearly enough earlier but I think the Trademe auction phenomenon (if I can call it that) does have a relevance for Real Estate today as it has made nearly every section of NZ society hugely aware of both auctions and online marketing as a credible vehicles for selling product.
This in itself legitimises auctioning property as NZers familiarise (or educate) themselves again with auctions. I personally use the trademe auction model as an analogy when I talk to vendors about vendor-funded advertising and using professional Real Estate auctions – Trademe is so well known and visibly parallels some of the great features of auctions eg competition, reserves, vendor controlled deadlines and the theatre of auction etc
I do believe this particular online auction has exposed the property to significantly more people than if they had invested in a more traditional Real Estate Marketing campaign with newspaper, fliers and traditional online listings.
And the level of exposure is what I applauded.
I feel exposing a property as being for sale is a HUGE part of what we do. And I don’t expect the “whole world” will want to buy all properties but we encourage as many people as possible to view/reaserch them…in the same way we encourage neighbours to come through our vendors’ open homes. Not because we genuinely think they will buy the property – BUT because we know they tell friends/family and hope they tell/influence the actual BUYER who is prepared to offer the perfect $$ and on a S&P agreement and actually settle on the property.
Alistair – perhaps http://www.realestate.co.nz could offer these disappointed vendors a complimentary FEATURED LISTING on http://www.realestate.co.nz.
It would be legitimate Real Estate advertising and -if I’m right- will expose their property to genuine property buyers searching the most specific real estate portal in the country.
Mason,
An excellent suggestion to assist the vendors. Your comments are valuable – I agree that exposure is critical in marketing a property. I do however believe this is not the exclusive domain of real estate agents- professional agents offer so much more than just marketing. In time marketing of property will become commoditised – it is already, by default of Trade me – how could a property have been viewed over 250,000 times for $199 – a TV channel would have charged tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past for such exposure.
As to saying that Trade me has educated people to auctions – I would say it has educated people to online auctions for cheap secondhand household goods where the majority of sales are completed, and tens or hundreds of dollars change hands.
When it comes to a property purchase to the value of many hundreds of thousands of dollars the euphoria of online trading auctions is no place for such a property as this case in point ably demonstrates. If it was, do you not think this industry would have built and operated such an online auction based version of realestate.co.nz a long time ago??
I auctioned a property years ago and the purchaser’s looked like they weren’t serious and may have tried to pull out, no deposit etc. I quickly jumped on the phone and rang the under-bidders to see if they would come back and sign up. They bid $550,500 but said they had stretched themselves and would now only pay $510,000. Luckily the winning bidder came good, phew! Well run legitimate auctions that get the emotions pumping are the way to go.
Alistair – well done I see you’ve added a featured listing on http://www.realestate.co.nz for this couple.
You can see it here amongst lifestyle properties in Otago
They seem to be getting strong traffic intantly – shows the benefit of featured listings pretty dramatically
Mason
Credit where credit is due! – thank you for suggesting this.
I have just had the most wonderful telephone call with the owner of this property, she is very grateful for our assistance.
I thanked her for her appreciation – it is the least we could do, I told her that the whole team here at realestate.co.nz offered their sympathy on the failure of the auction – we wish her all the best, and anything we can do along with her agent at Harcourts we are only too happy to do.
You are right the level of interest of the listing is huge – 278 views yesterday 96 so far today – that compares to 35 in total in the prior week – the traffic stats can be viewed online here.