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Western Sydney friendship duo Omar and Oz’s record-breaking The Block victory was an exhibition of the importance of pre-auction buyer meetings, according to the professionals involved in the deal.
Speaking in a special edition of Real Estate Exposed, Tom Panos, the auctioneer responsible for the $5.66 million sale of the 10-acre, five-bedroom, and three-bathroom property in Victoria’s Gisborne, explained a minor tweak to his sales strategy, born out of changing market conditions, that played a role in the successful sale — pre-auction meetings.
“I’ve been doing it [pre-auction meetings] since the market changed,” the real estate coach said. “If I’m not doing it, the agents have got to be doing it.
“Everyone has pre-auction reserve meetings! I tell people to have pre-auction buyer meetings with their best buyers prior to auction and say, ‘hey, this is what is going to happen on the day, I’m letting you know this is the best way that you’re going to be able to secure real estate. Go hard. Go fast. Go early.”
“You’ve got to get close to the buyers,” he implored, revealing that during these meetings, he would implore buyers to “have a hammer blow, knock ‘em out”.
It is a strategy the eventual winners employed, with Ray White Sunbury principal Aaron Hill admitting that prior to the big day, they “went through and spoke to a lot of people with deep pockets and had a lot of parties with them. We had Adrian Portelli, Danny Wallis, and other buyers over for barbecues and events.”
“At the launch party, we invited all the biggest buyer advocates that have been on The Block before. We invited all the buyers from previous [The] Block seasons to a party one night; there were about 120 people there — no one else did,” he said.
“We had the boys talk to their buyers on a personal level because they aren’t just buyers to us,” he said, adding that such conversations allowed buyers to gain an insight into why Omar and Oz built the house and their subsequent passion for the project.
Further to face-to-face strategy, the team also employed the power of “digital and social media marketing to amplify [their] message”.
Mr Hill admitted that “from the start, we knew there wasn’t going to be a huge amount of buyers”, a statement ratified by Mr Panos, who admitted that the results would have been vastly different had the auction occurred in February rather than at the weekend.
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