If you are selling ILUs today, there are three classic real estate marketing points you must take into account. The first is in order to make sales before Christmas, you need to be active in your marketing now. The second is the market decides the price of real estate you have to price to meet market expectation, especially in a downturn (gloss does not do the trick). With villages, however, there is a slight opportunity to be price elastic i.e. charge a premium which leads to point number three, namely no matter what the economy is doing, there is a portion of the market that will have to change their accommodation situation when health issues strike.
Concentrating on point one, to buy into a village requires selling the family home. Everybody wants to sell at the best time of year, and in most residential markets the peak selling times are Spring (October / November) and late January through to the Easter long weekend. To sell this Spring requires at least three months:
? Two weeks to develop the contract of sale
? Two weeks to choose selling agent
? Two weeks to develop marketing material (i.e. signs)
? Six to eight weeks to sell
That brings us back to now. The added urgency of a declining market means you should be aggressively prospecting for new residents today. Yet, many marketers we speak to say they are waiting until September
(Our July issues of Villages.com.au Magazine close off for advertising end of next week NSW, QLD & VIC editions).
