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A Sydney agent who forced buyers to emotionally invest in his listing has left his vendors with an extra $100,000 in their pockets.
Brett Ramsey from Ramsey Property ran an emotion-driven campaign for a vacant block of waterfront land that he sold for $2.6 million – $100,000 above the estimate he gave the vendor at the start of the campaign.
Instead of emphasising features, the listing for “the last waterfront block in Connells Point” painted a picture of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy into an idyllic lifestyle involving sailing and water views.
“I always try to sell the dream if there’s an obvious dream to be sold,” Mr Ramsey told REB.
“When people purchase, they start off thinking about dollars but it then turns into an emotional sale. So what you want to try to do in your marketing copy is to capture that emotional part straight up front and then work from there.”
Mr Ramsey said appealing to buyers’ hearts helped trigger strong competition, which resulted in him handing out five contracts and selling the property before auction.
The block of land had been vacant since a subdivision in the 1960s. When Mr Ramsey spoke to buyers, he reminded them of the rareness of the opportunity, and invited them to imagine living with their family in a home of their own design.
“There are a lot of emotional triggers that I use in my conversations with buyers, and that’s consistent in all my properties,” he said.
“One of the questions I ask is, ‘What have you seen?’ That gives me an idea of what they’re looking at and price point,” he added.
“The second question I asked is, ‘Are you building for yourself or are you building to on-sell?', which is a key question because if they’re building for themselves, you tend to achieve a higher premium because they’re not so worried about over-capitalising.”
Mr Ramsey said he won the listing because he had already sold two homes for the vendors in 2008 and 2010.
“I had a great relationship with them – the sales before went well, so it was a natural thing to gain this property when it came on the market,” he said.
“I regularly kept in contact with them. I kept them updated about market trends, and spoke to them about this property over the years until it became available.”
[Related: Agents failing to ‘stimulate emotional interest’ with ads]
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