How to Talk Sense with Commercial Property Sellers

In commercial real estate brokerage, a good degree of client conditioning happens with sellers as they look to achieve a sale result or a positive negotiation outcome.  Talking logical common sense with them is important, and that approach should be supported by local property market evidence.

Most property owners have an inflated view of property values that they believe should apply to their property in a typical sale.  Somehow you must work with this problem and help the client see the actual property market conditions with comparable properties.  Good communication skills apply.  Convincing information is required.

Your strategies and skills here as a broker or agent in conditioning the client are quite important.  How good are you at conditioning your clients and prospects to the current property market?  Think about these questions:

• What location factors will have an impact on the property and its marketing or price negotiations?
• How many other properties are there on the market now that could be competing with your listing?
• Given the other nearby ‘competing’ properties, what are the pressures and prices that could be a challenge to your client’s property?
• What marketing factors do you think are more relevant to the subject property in the current situation?
• What will be the target market that you should attract to the property to achieve the best price? How will that be done?
• What do you need to do to encourage offers from your target market? What will be the best method of sale to get in the enquiries?
• What media choices should you use in promoting the property?

These issues are all important as you seek to get a sale result for your client’s property.   To answer these questions with the client some local property market evidence will be required, and that evidence will require careful communication to your clients.  All of your professional skills will be needed to communicate the right message and strategy.

Common Sense Prevails

Here are some ideas that can help when it comes to ‘talking sense with sellers’ on property pricing matters:

• Use a map – Show the client where the competing properties are located, and where possible physically take them to the locations. Where possible, use photographs and comparable property detail to support your observations and recommendations.
• Show the averages – In commercial real estate, it is relatively easy to analyze sales figures over recent time in property precincts. Those numbers can be tabled in a graph to show clear trends.
• Split the marketing processes up – Show the client the differences in time on the market when it comes to exclusive listings versus open listings. In most cases, the exclusive listings should have sold faster and at better prices than the open listings.
• Illustrate the full vendor paid marketing advantages – Most clients and sellers of property initially don’t want to spend money on marketing. However, the reality of property promotion says that vendor paid marketing works faster when it comes to getting more inspection results, property offers, and better sale prices. The simple fact to illustrate here to the client is the advantages of the marketing spend and where the money should be spent.
• Show the value and detail of your database – When you are attempting to list a property or negotiate on a price, remember the value of your database and the information that you have in that list. Identify the people in your list that you believe could be ‘shortlisted’ to inspect the subject property.  Talk about them and the ‘shortlist’ process with the client.  It is hard for a client as a seller to ignore your qualified buyers in any database list; that is why your database list is so important to your real estate business.  Explain your ideas and recommendations with a reference to the people that you have spoken to in your database.  Use third-party comment as part of your client conditioning processes.

So, there are things that you can do here when it comes to seller conditioning.  Talk sense with your property owners and sellers of property.  Use local information and proven communication strategies to help the client see what is happening locally with property sales.  These things should help when it comes to the key decision factors of selling, such as those associated with the method of promotion and the method of marketing.