Would you let a potential buyer stay the night?

Try before you buy – would you let a potential buyer stay the night?

It’s not a new concept – we all love a free sample, and for good reason!

But a free sleepover as a way to taste-test a property? Now, that’s a novel idea.

Any sales person worth their weight knows that you never sell a property based on its specs; you sell it based on an emotional attachment to the idea of living there.

We all know that moment – you can see it in their eyes.  They have mentally moved in. It’s a key milestone in the sales process and one that sales people are always chasing. Part of aiding that imaginative thought process is giving a buyer something to see and touch: something to experience.

You probably already ‘stage’ your properties (and if you don’t, consider this great article on why you should). But how do we counter the effect of walking away? Of returning home, rethinking and rationalising the emotional attachment? We let them have a sleepover of course!
This idea certainly has a strong basis in psychology. The hardest part of selling someone on a home is making them see it as their home: waking up in the morning, making their morning coffee, hosting a group of friends around the dining table and kissing their significant other goodnight. If someone can see themselves having these experiences in a home – this home – you could argue the house is as good as sold.

This isn’t a totally novel idea: it’s something that’s been tried before in London for hard to sell properties (the Financial Times will ask you to pay one dollar to read all about it). And this isn’t to say you should go out and start letting people sleep in your listings every night. A listing sleepover is certainly a twirly concept to sell to your vendor and presents some clear risks to manage!
But in a tough market, could this be the difference between you and the next sales rep? And in the spirit of kicking off the New Year with a step outside the box, we had to share this idea with you.

Speaking of try before you buy and out of the box thinking – if you found this article interesting, you’d probably get a lot out of West Coast Property Training’s try before you buy Diploma of Property Services. If knowledge is power, then why wouldn’t you want more knowledge!

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