It struck me while listening to a podcast the other day that houses are just like handbags!
Not just because the bigger they are the more clutter you can put in them or because what appeals to one person won’t necessarily appeal to the next, although both of these points are true! But no, I was thinking more in terms of sales.
Buying New
If you go out to buy a brand-new designer handbag, you’ll see it in the best stores, with a plinth or display all of its own, possibly a light shining directly on to it, lots of space all around it and an immaculately presented member of staff just waiting to pounce.
Similarly, if you buy a new-build home, there’ll be a marketing suite with charming staff, glossy brochures, a site model and refreshments, then there’ll be a show home designed to within an inch of its life with all the latest gadgets, the must-read magazines, images of the perfect family, and other elements of an implied lifestyle that we all aspire to.
Things are seldom that sparkly when buying second hand – the house that’s been lived in, the car that’s got 20k miles on the clock, and the handbag that’s seen a few cocktail bars.
Buying Secondhand
(Watch the video – Why is selling your home like selling a handbag?)
A young lady called Steph Turton had a passion for designer, luxury handbags. She would buy them from ebay and she quickly found that many bags were really poorly presented with bad pictures, sparse descriptions and missing authentication, and as a result she could buy them for less than they were worth.
She started reselling the bags, giving them a clean, getting them authenticated and taking (much) better photographs of each bag both in terms of quality and presentation – a bag would be shown dangling from the arm of someone in a Chanel suit, or perched elegantly on the edge of a table with sparkling tableware blurred in the background.
Now that presentation might or might not work for someone like me, but then I’m not her target buyer. I’m not the 25-35 year old city girl with high disposable income, an active social life, and dreams of a ‘bright lights big city’ lifestyle, that she’s aiming for! But Steph’s business, Handbagholic, has been really successful as a result of her remarketing work.
If it’s worth making the effort for a handbag, then isn’t it worth it for your home?
Marketing is such a huge part of selling your home that it is absolutely worth going the extra mile to make sure your home stands out from the crowd and attracts the right buyers.
Next Steps
So, once you’ve given your home a spring clean, had a declutter and fixed all the outstanding maintenance snags, it’s time to sit down and think about your target buyer.
Who is likely to buy your home? Will they be old, young, first time buyer, family, multi-generational family, downsizers, single person, dinkies……… the list goes on.
Then once you’ve worked it out, you can make the subtle changes that hint at the lifestyle that your buyer desires, before having fantastic quality photographs taken by a professional. (Not a guy with an i-phone, not a man with fancy IT and a tripod, but a professional photographer who will capture both the rooms and the lifestyle).
If it all sounds too complicated and you need help either working out who your target buyer is or creating their lifestyle, then give me a call.
