Commercial Real Estate Brokerage – How to Revitalize a Stale Listing
Some commercial property listings take a very long time to sell or lease. When that happens, there are a few strategies to bring into play. The first step is to take the property off the market so you can re-position it; build an alternative strategy of promotion and or condition the client. A ‘stale’ listing can most likely be turned into an opportunity over time. (NB – you can get plenty of listing ideas in ‘Commercial Snapshot’ right here)
Difficult Clients?
We have all come across a client that that has expectations that are well away from property market conditions when it comes to achievable prices and rents. After a few attempts at ‘conditioning’, it is sometimes better to drop the listing. In saying that, provide the client with a good briefing on competing listings, known inquiry rates, and sale or lease results. Use case studies and research material to help re-position their thinking.
Common Listing Problems
Most properties will sell or lease, providing the right target market is identified and captured, and the realistic market prices and or rents are used. In saying that you get many other problems confusing the property coverage issue, including those such as:
- Too many competing listings
- Clients that fail to listen to and recognize property market conditions
- Not enough inspections
- Not enough marketing money
- Poor promotional campaign strategy
- Inexperience with negotiation
- Poor property presentation
- Slow or changing market conditions
Its Time to Act
So, let’s say that one or more of these factors mentioned are impacting your listing and it has become ‘stale’ from a lengthy time on market perspective. It is time to take the property off the market; it is time to do some rethinking.
When the property is withdrawn from the eye of the public, you can then rethink just about every aspect of the property to see where you can build another story for alternative promotion, attract another target market, or design a different campaign for a later time.
A New Approach
Here are some of the things that should be looked at with those ‘stale’ investment properties to build a new approach to attracting buyers or tenants:
- Refresh the property presentation externally to ‘lift’ the visual appeal
- Inject more money into a fresh promotional campaign to run a couple of months on
- Look at the tenant mix for weaknesses and vacancies or rents that require fixing
- Take professional photographs of the property to boost visual interest
- Review the different target markets of tenants or buyers that the property suits
- Evaluate the methods of sale or lease to an alternative approach
- Look at the competing listings locally to see if they are doing something differently that you can bring across to your property marketing
- Revisit your online and offline methods of promotion for a new approach to connect with the target audience
Through these strategies and others like them, you can turn a ‘stale’ listing into an opportunity. Stay close to the client and help them see the necessity to cooperate with some ‘re-positioning’ of their asset and its property challenge. A ‘stale’ listing can be revitalized.
