How to Rehabilitate Listings in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
So many commercial real estate agents and brokers struggle with market and commission results because they do not ‘rehabilitate’ their listings. Professionalism in our industry says that we must track and shape the enquiries that we get for our listings and our clients.
So what does ‘rehabilitate’ mean? It’s a bit like refreshing the property and the marketing campaign. Remember this is a strategy to be used with all of your listings. After a period of time, a property listing will become stale and overworked; the enquiry rate will fall and the inspections will slow. That is where you move to the ‘next level’ with the client to help them see how to ‘repackage’ the property for more action and enquiry.
Top agents know how to do this, ordinary agents are not much good at it. Consider the facts; you have spent a lot of time finding the client, listing the property and promoting it. Sometimes you may not ‘hit the mark’ when it comes to the property promotion.
Adjustments are a valuable strategy to revitalise enquiry and inspections. If you do not repackage your listings on a regular basis, the clients will get frustrated with no offers being made or fewer inspections coming in. If this problem is not fixed, the client will get annoyed with you as the agent and the listing will expire. Who loses? You do, in many different ways including lost time, money, and opportunity. So what can you do to solve this? Try some of these:
- The first 3 or 4 weeks of any marketing campaign are very important. Beyond that point momentum will slow, so repackaging is a consideration in weeks 5 to 6.
- Don’t be afraid to remove a listing from the market for a month or so. This is a valuable strategy when you are changing the method of sale or the marketing campaign.
- Keep the client briefed on all inspections so they clearly know what inspecting parties are saying and thinking.
- Understand the pressures of the competing properties locally. They may be frustrating your marketing campaign. What can you do that may be more attractive to buyers or tenants?
- When it comes to promoting any property, what can you do that would be different and special? How can you make your property listing stand out?
- Put yourself into the marketing campaign so you can get involved with building local enquiry and inspections. Talk to lots of local people. Find out what they think about the area and the property.
- Promote a property with a target market segment in mind. Don’t be generic in your marketing efforts. Take the time to understand the property and design your marketing efforts to reach the right market segments.
So you have a good listing or a few of them; the facts are that you should refresh and rehabilitate your listings regularly to build enquiry and momentum in the market.
