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An outer-suburban agent has taken on an almighty challenge with a highly unusual three-storey property that has both beguiled and confounded buyers.
Mick Dolphin from Barry Plant Emerald in Melbourne has tried to stir the imagination of buyers, basing his campaign on the property’s enormous potential rather than its unusual reality.
The 14-room residence is a cavernous brick-and-concrete structure that is crying out to be renovated – but Mr Dolphin told REB it is hard to make buyers visualise how such an unwieldy home could be tamed.
“I think what we normally try to do is throw a few ideas around – ‘I think this would be good for a bedroom’ or ‘this would be good for a living room’ or ‘we could put a kitchen in this area here',” he said.
“I explain the three levels on the property and what the original concept was,” he added.
“Once they get their head around what it was supposed to be, I think it makes it easier to get their head around what they could do with it, because it’s an overwhelming property the first time you walk through there.”
Mr Dolphin said the home, which has been advertised at $550,000-plus, has attracted about 200 groups since he took over the listing several months ago.
Some of these buyers have shown interest in renovating, but have been deterred by the scale of the property and the costs that would be imposed, according to Mr Dolphin.
About one third of the people who have inspected the property have been genuine buyers, with the others just curious to look at what is a well-known local landmark, he said.
The property was previously listed by Bell Real Estate, which was looking for offers over $725,000.
Mr Dolphin said he won the listing at the second attempt due to his more realistic price estimate, although he added that valuing such an idiosyncratic property was difficult.
“I worked it out based on land value and tried to work out whether there was any attributable value to the property, because the building itself is unusual,” he said.
[LinkedIn: Describe your most successful marketing campaign]
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