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Marking Data Dance, RP Data


Marking Data Dance, RP Data

A successful real estate business boasting a significant market share is in that position because they know how to use data well.

To make the data work for you, every agent needs to have the best product knowledge when it comes to their market, otherwise they can lose the listing, RP Data General Manager David Williams said. “There is nothing worse than going into a listing presentation, you think you gave it your all, you know you are the best agent to sell the place but you are let down because on your comparable market appraisal you’ve left out two, three, four, five or ten properties that your competitors had,” Mr Williams explained.

Add value with data

Many agents know the basics of how data can work for them, but they have not drilled down into the information to understand the person who owns each dwelling. “If you don’t understand the dynamics of your marketplace and you don’t understand what your vendors will be looking for, you will not gain as many listings and you will make less commission,” Mr Williams said. “Vendors are a lot smarter these days - all they have to do is go onto Google and they can find out a lot of free information about their area. Their agent is expected to know all that and more. If you can demonstrate that, you’ll be able to demonstrate you can add value in the sales process and you are going to get more listings.”

RP Data allows real estate agents to map relevant data, such as lot size, price, days on market and last sale price on an aerial view so they can graphically demonstrate the difference between one side of the street to the other, and one property to another. Every property in Australia is revalued on a weekly basis, based on bank valuations, using RP Data’s Automated Valuation Model (AVM).

“An AVM can be used not just to educate sellers but to educate buyers to bring them up to the level where you and the vendor would like to see that property transacted,” Mr Williams explained, outlining an agent can be confident in information they give a vendor as it is based on up-to-date statistical data, not just his or her opinion.

Data backs up local knowledge

Some properties, such as waterfronts, rural and those that are unique, cannot always be accurately valued with the AVM system, so an agent’s local knowledge is imperative. “AVM does not replace the expertise that a local agent must demonstrate to their market,” Mr Williams added.

Looking at the bigger picture, RP Data allows agents to research comparable factors for any area in Australia, such as transactions, price ranges, time taken to sell, level of discounting (from initial listed price to sold price), market dynamics and even rentals versus sales. “Really do your research properly, understand what is going on in your marketplace, be honest about that in your conversation with your vendors and buyers and you will soon find you are the stand-out professional in your area,” Mr Williams said.

Using data to get ahead

Brett Andreassen, 24, has worked with Doug Disher Real Estate for five years, starting as a personal assistant (PA) for 18 months before moving into a sales role.

He is now listing 16 properties a month and averaging around 10 apartment sales in Brisbane’s inner western suburbs each month. Mr Andreassen was able to move from his PA role into sales by using data. Keen to get some listings, he started cold calling, but when that didn’t work he went back to the property owners and offered them an annual report on recent sales in the area. Every person he contacted wanted the report and he now provides it every three months.

“If anyone calls me up or sends me a text message and says ‘I’d like a report on the recent sales’, I save their details into my phone with their property address so if they ever call me, their address comes up, and I’ll say ‘Fantastic, how is the property going in Park Ave?’” Mr Andreassen explained.

The report includes the price the property sold for, the price it listed at, how long it took to sell, information from realestate.com and a photo. “People want to know price. They want to know how long things take to sell. Why not give them that information rather than hold it back so they have to call me to get that information?” he asked.

Once a vendor is in Mr Andreassen’s quarterly report system, he lets them know when nearby properties sell. “I look through the names and say hey I just sold a place near them, then I’ll give them a call. If I have spoken to them or driven past their house I know they’ve done a renovation or something, then I’ll go and call them and say I noticed you did the renovation when I was doing my report."

The initial report Mr Andreassen puts together for a vendor includes information from realestate.com, RP Data, his knowledge of the area and information buyers have passed on. Once that is done he updates it every month for quarterly post and email distribution to 2500 potential sellers, which is done in batches of around eight a day. Not only does this reporting keep him on top of what is going on in the market, but it also keeps the information fresh in Mr Andreassen’s head. “I’ve got a 98 per cent response rate from it.”

"We changed our just sold or just listed letters to say, ‘If you want to know the sold price, SMS your name and address and property address to this number,’ which is my mobile,” he explained, saying SMS worked better because people could respond at any time and then he called back immediately, impressing them with his commitment.

Making data personal

Chris Hanley of Byron Bay First National makes data dance by understanding the relationship between an agent and a vendor when prospecting.

Instead of seeing prospecting as telemarketers pestering people at night, Mr Hanley said it was actually everything an agent did that others saw or heard. “Prospecting is all of the human contacts you have. All the contacts, all the discussions, it’s all your questions that you ask people, it’s the community work and people watching you do things that are either a business activity or a non business activity,” he said.

Find ways to make contact with people that you are comfortable with, such as community work or talking in the supermarket. “Sometimes prospecting is when you ask all the questions, but sometimes, and this one is a hard one for agents, it’s where you just do all the listening,” he said, explaining effective prospecting wasn’t about how many thousand people were on the database, but how many an agent had a “real” relationship with, where they remembered their name and face. Once this relationship has been cemented they will, “refer to you as their agent and ring you for advice regularly”.

“If you rang everyone in a particular street to become the expert in that street and knew all their names and the names of their dogs and the size of their blocks of land and have all the evidence of the sale prices and so on, I guarantee in two years you will be making a lot of money and be the expert in your suburb,” Mr Hanley said, emphasising the need to keep all data by writing everything down and wasting nothing.

Becoming known as an area expert area means people will stick. One way Mr Hanley added to his expert status was by registering domain names of all the streets in his area such as www.jonesstreet.com, on advice from Lee Woodward at Real Estate Academy. “We are then collecting information about those areas, pictorial information, sales information, rental information and information from the local people by prospecting, all of which were gluing together if you like, and ultimately we are going to register all of these as little websites or connections or links to websites and become the experts,” he explained.

“People want to deal with people who do know everything. Prospecting is the best source of information and it’s free. The only place you can get it is from the people who live in the area, and the only way you do that is by making prospecting calls.” An agent must know the answers to all questions about their area to be considered the expert – and this information doesn’t always come from working in the offi ce, it comes from prospecting.

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Marking Data Dance, RP Data