Narrowing down what you REALLY want in a property

Bright eyed and bushy tailed I arrived at work my first day as a real estate sales consultant aged 19 and full of all the confidence in the world. The other more experienced agents were so nice and handed me scores of buyer leads to chase up on my first day. I was over the moon and so I glued that phone to my ear and got to work.

It didn’t take me too long to twig onto why the other agents were so keen to offload some of these buyer leads. These were people, in some cases, who had looked at HUNDREDS of homes over the space of, again in some case, years.

Naively I set off thinking I would be the one to convert them to a real fair dinkum buyer, not a time-waster which they currently were! I must admit that in my early days I didn’t succeed all that well with that plan! I ran up a lot of mileage in my car and I made some great friends, but didn’t convert too many of these long term lookers into buyers.

In looking back know I feel like one of the main things holding me back as an agent then, was that I’d ask what the buyers were looking for in a property, get a huge list of requirements and then head off blindly into the fray without figuring out what was REALLY important to them.

In a session a few years ago a fabulous trainer – Deb MacQueen – showed me this simple little method. You might want to use it if you’re a sales or rental agent suggesting properties to prospective buyers or tenants. Or maybe you’d like to use it if you’re looking to buy or rent and can’t seem to narrow your requirements down! Strangely you can even use it to narrow down the features you really desire in a prospective partner, employee, job and more!

Step 1.

Write down the features you think you want in a property in no particular order (just as they come to you):

No. Feature
1 - Location of North Melbourne
2 - Bath
3 - Views of the water
4 - 4 bedrooms
5 - 2 car garage
6 - a pool
7 - 2 bathrooms
8 - Victorian / Edwardian style
9 - Floorboards
10 - Sunny aspect

Step 2.

Choice 1 or 2?
Answer 2
Choice 2 or 3?
Answer 2
Choice 3 or 4?
Answer 4
Choice 4 or 5?
Answer 5
Choice 5 or 6?
Answer 5

Then go through and select a preference for each of the questions. Select your preference by saying which of these is more important to me, 1 or 2?, 7 or 6? etc.

Step 3.

Number Total Number Total sorted
3's - 0 - least important
10's - 4 - through to
2's - 10 - most important

Tally up the number of times 1 was your preference, 2, 3 and so forth. From there can rank each feature from least to most important.

To download this a handy little form to assist you, head to:
www.kirstydunphey.com/gfx/resources/property_preference_finder_form

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By Kirsty Dunphey with No comments