How To Sell Luxury Real Estate

How To Successfully Sell Your Luxury Home

When it comes to the term luxury everyone expects there to be more than just routine features, the word luxury conveys thoughts of opulence, lavishness, or extravagant. A luxury home is no different in that it is normally a home that costs more because it has more lavish features and is larger compared to a non-luxury home. 

As a result, the preparation and presentation of a high-end home for sale must also meet the standards of luxury marketing. 90% of selling a home is getting potential buyers interested in visiting the home first. Once luxury buyers visit the home they must be happy with the physical condition of the home as well as believe it is priced according to its true value. 

With that in mind here are some tips to help make sure your luxury home is elevated enough so that not only do buyers come in to view your home in person but also will be ready to make an offer.

Pricing Your Luxury Home

Properly pricing a luxury home for sale is a critical component for selling in your local real estate market. Overpricing a high-end home can produce the most negative effects on a home sale by far. Any money spent on marketing, advertising, staging, and more will be wasted if no buyers consider the home due to it being overpriced. Pricing is also one of those tasks that sometimes due to the limited amount of comparable luxury sales in the same location makes it difficult to determine an accurate price. Pricing challenges for luxury homes also increase as the luxury home increases in dollar value and/or in situations where they happen to be located in unique areas with very few other luxury homes.

The best way to price a high-end home is to look at luxury homes that have already sold within the past six months and compare the home features, square footage, bedroom

How To Successfully Sell Your Luxury Home

How To Successfully Sell Your Home

counts and more to try and determine a price. Generally, luxury homes that have sold within six months before the day the research is being conducted are ideal to obtain accurate pricing data. Where fewer luxury homes are being sold then the six months can be extended to look further back than six months but generally similar sales older than a year should not be used.

The pricing of other luxury homes should be compared to homes that are similar in bedroom count, bathroom count, and features of the home (i.e. pool, tennis court, 3-4 car garage). Adjustments downward or upward to the listing price should be made where the sales being compared have fewer or more bedrooms/bathrooms, amenities, and other features. Due to the unique features of a luxury home, the search for comparable sales may have to extend to other areas that also have the same type of build and size luxury home. Analysis should be done to compare the different areas as well to determine if generally the same type of home is priced lower or higher specifically due to location. If there are general residential home price differences between locations then the price differences should be accounted for when comparing luxury sales between those locations to determine the best price to list at.

Luxury Real Estate Video and Photography

Over 90% of buyers are looking to begin their home search online. As a result, the pictures and videos used to market a luxury home need to be the best they can be to attract buyer attention. Once the buyers take notice of the video and photos of a home they are more likely to want to come and visit in person thus increasing foot traffic which in turn means there will also be a greater chance of getting one or more offers on the home.

While most point-and-shoot cameras have been replaced with cellular phones, neither point-and-shoot cameras nor cellular phone cameras have a place in the luxury real estate industry. The quality that point-and-shoot cameras can deliver is quite lacking. While cellular phone cameras are quite advanced the lack of a quality wide-angle lens or the ability to use a flash limits their ability to deliver quality photographs of the inside of homes. As a result, if anyone offers to take pictures of your luxury home with a point-and-shoot camera or a cell phone you may wish to reconsider using their services.

The same for photos of your luxury home also applies to the videos. High-definition quality video cameras and gear should be used to record footage from your luxury home. The video should show off important features and unique aspects of the luxury home. Jumpy quality video from cell phone cameras and basic point-and-shoot cameras will only serve to distract buyers or to cause them to not bother looking at the marketing for more than a few seconds which is not enough to get their attention.

Using a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle or drone) to take aerial photos and videos of your home can also be a great visual marketing piece to add to the regular pictures and videos of the home. The aerial video and pictures could also be used to show off the unique features of the home and neighborhood. Features like luxury pools, large well-manicured acreage, detached in-law/guest house, tennis/basketball courts, and more when shot from high above the home let buyers see the many luxury home features.

Staging Your High-End Home

The staging of a luxury home (if needed) not only helps with online marketing by showing incredible rooms and plenty of space but it also

How To Successfully Sell Your Luxury Home

How To Successfully Sell Luxury Real Estate

helps when buyers come to visit in person or at an open house. Pictures and videos can only convey so much and when buyers want to visit the home the in-person experience needs to be as great as the online experience. Some basic tips for staging luxury homes include reducing the personalization (collectibles, photos or paintings of family, exotic art or furniture), painting walls in neutral colors, and reducing or rearranging furniture to present a more open space throughout the home.

Luxury buyers need to be able to tour a home and imagine themselves living in it and using the home according to their needs. If a home is too personalized the buyers may not be able to look past the personalization and as a result, may be less likely to put in an offer. Professional staging services or working with a real estate agent who understands staging can be helpful when getting a luxury home ready for sale.

Pre-Sale Home Inspection

One way to ensure your home is seen as a top-quality luxury home is by getting a home inspection performed before putting it up for sale. A home inspection will determine if any major issues with the home should be addressed before putting it on the luxury real estate market. Additionally, a pre-sale home inspection will help identify minor issues that can be taken care of to leave one less thing to worry about when an offer does come in. A luxury home that shows both its quality in appearance and physical condition goes a long way to assuring buyers they are making the right choice when they decide to buy a home.

Timing Of A Luxury Home Sale

Since a luxury home will take a little longer to sell due to fewer buyers who are in the luxury home market, luxury homeowners should be prepared to have their homes sit on the market longer. Once an offer does come in, the time required to get to the closing table can also be longer than the closing time for a non-luxury home unless the purchase is an all-cash offer. A luxury home being purchased with a mortgage requires more time to close to account for multiple appraisals, multiple underwriting reviews, and more which are required for luxury home mortgages.

Final Thoughts on Tips for Selling Luxury Homes

Since the term luxury conveys with it additional expectations luxury sellers need to be prepared to deliver great luxury marketing and selling presentations of their home. By concentrating on great videos, photos, and home presentations, buyers will be wowed online as well as in person. Home buyers who are happy with what they see both online and in-person will be all the more ready to submit an offer.

Additional Seller Resources:
8 Smart Tips For Selling Luxury Properties Video on YouTube via Kyle Hiscock
Getting Your Home Ready For Selling In The Spring by Luke Skar
Smart Tips For Selling A Luxury House by Bill Gassett

This article was written by Paul Sian with HER Realtors, a luxury real estate agent in Cincinnati, Ohio. Paul works with luxury home buyers and sellers in the Greater Cincinnati, Ohio area including Northern Kentucky. Feel free to reach out to Paul if you need help buying or selling a luxury home.

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Filed under: Real Estate

Luke Skar

Luke Skar is the web developer and content strategist for MadisonMortgageGuys.com. Currently working for NRL Mortgage which serves 47 states including Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, and Florida. Guided by his 20-plus years of various mortgage marketing experience, Luke provides top-quality SEO services, effective social media management, and web development and maintenance. Luke’s career in the mortgage industry began back in 2001, as a loan processor. After becoming a loan officer for a number of years, Luke now runs madisonmortgageguys.com. To ensure that all the information he posts is fresh, accurate, and up-to-date, Luke relies on the knowledge which his years of dedication to keeping up with the constant change that the mortgage industry provides.

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