How to break into your high-value homes market with our GDR Profit PlanTM blogpost for estate agents by Sam Ashdown

What’s your listed stock worth right now?

A quick canvas of our competitors reveals an average stock value of around £250,000. Here’s a pretty typical example of one of them:

19 properties listed (excluding STC):

0 over £1 million

1 at £500,000 – £1 million (5%)

7 between £250,000 – £500,000 (37%)

11 under £250,000 (58%)

Total value of listed fees at 1%: £45,200

 

Now imagine they (or you) could attract just THREE new, high value homes, in addition to their current stock, AND at a higher fee. Say, 1.5%.

1. £1,500,000 at £22,500 fee
2. £1,000,000 at £15,000 fee
3. £750,000 at £11,250 fee

Additional listing value £48,750

Total listing value now £93,950

 

That’s more than DOUBLE the value of the original stock. For just THREE new homes.

The difference? These are high-value homes. And listed at fees high-value home owners are more likely to be happy to pay.  

But how do you attract and win high value homes, without sacrificing any of your core revenue? After all, your bread-and-butter sales pay for office and payroll, so you need to make sure you still get the 2-bed terraces, and 3-bed semis. We get that.

But these new homes are ADDITIONAL fees. And the best news is that you can attract, win and sell these homes with no additional staff, offices, or even Rightmove fees.

 

Want to know how?

The answer is simple – but not easy. You need the very best property marketing.

The best photography, copywriting, brochures and boards. You also need to offer services your competitors probably don’t, like visual branding, home styling and twilight photography.

Bespoke property marketing

The following is a list of the elements of bespoke property marketing that we offer in our agency, AshdownJones:

  • Lifestyle photography
  • Drone photography
  • Twilight imagery
  • Professional copywriting
  • Vendor interview
  • Property styling
  • Property bespoke logo/branding
  • Printed magazine-style brochures, 20 pages or more
  • Specialist print finishes and formats
  • Bespoke for-sale board

When we opened our first office back in 2017, we had 57 competitors, all competing for the same instructions. This meant we had to do something different – radically and visibly different.

That’s why we set out to completely disrupt the market. We decided to attack with a three-pronged attack that formed our guiding principles:

1. We will only sell the very best homes in the very best places
2. People don’t want better, they want different
3. We need a niche of a sub-market – the sub-market is the unique homes, and the niche: we will only work with clients who truly love our marketing.

Most estate agents pursue mass market share, which results in lower fees secured, and a high resource cost; thus, lower profit. We made the decision to avoid the low fee cycle. Knowing that by charging the highest fees (1.5% against the highest competitor’s fee of 1%), we can afford the very best property marketing, and therefore attract the best properties and clients. By being selective and charging high fees, we don’t need to take on many clients each year, leaving us free to spend time with our small selection of clients, giving them a VIP experience, as well as time on growth strategies and success planning.

We knew we could differentiate ourselves most easily, quickly and effectively by creating a completely new level of property marketing.

The professional photography offered by our competitors is no longer a differentiator; we create lifestyle images of beautifully-styled homes.

A Ravensworth laminated tent-fold no longer impresses; a bespoke, magazine-style 16-page brochure wins us the very best fees.

A standard branded for sale board wouldn’t catch the eye of the homeowners we really want to notice us, so we created beautiful, bespoke boards, and our clients love them. 

Taking your property marketing to a whole new level can make your brand more aspirational, and so give you the confidence you need to walk into a multi-million pound home and win the instruction, – and at the best fees.

If you do what other agents are doing, you’ll get what other agents get. Don’t you want more for you, your team and your brand?

 

If you’re not sure where to start with bespoke property marketing, we can help.

We are Sam Ashdown and Phil Jones, and we founded the AJ Mastermind to help agents like you to create the agency of your dreams. Collectively we have coached and trained over 1,000 agents since 2004 to build and grow their businesses to levels they could never have thought possible, and we want to help you to do the same. We know exactly what it takes to build an agency to seven figures in sales, even for agents with modest budgets, no high street office and who are juggling family responsibilities.

Our mission is simple – we want to enable and empower you to win the best fees from the best homes in your area.

We now teach the AJ methods to estate agents all over the UK, with challenges that include:

  • Getting stuck at a certain income level, unable to break through to the next level
  • Struggling to gain or retain market share against aggressive competition in their area
  • Trading unprofitably
  • Finding it hard to attract and retain the best team
  • Being overwhelmed by marketing methods, unsure what works and how to use it
  • Lack of stock
  • Not able to attract high-value homeowners

And every other kind of challenge you can think of!

And in that time, we’ve grown AshdownJones to an annual turnover of £950,000 (sales only) and being the number one agent in the Lakes for homes over £1 million. We’ve just branched out into the Yorkshire Dales too, so watch this space!

We know you need:

1. A plan for success
2. The motivation to implement it
3. The support of people who have achieved what you’re aiming for.

And that’s why we created the AJ Mastermind:

…to help you create a clear strategy that’s unique to your business, but based on proven systems, and to give you the support you need to implement more quickly and effectively than you ever thought possible.

But be warned…

 

THE AJ MASTERMIND IS EXTREMELY INTENSE

When you enrol, you will be fully immersed in working with our team for a full 12 months, including:

  • Regular live Mastermind events
  • ‘Behind the scenes’ at AJ for both you and your team members
  • Expert training days on the topics that matter the most to you
  • One-to-one coaching
  • Live Q&A sessions
  • Access to the AshdownJones expert team
  • Membership of our private Ignite Mastermind community
  • Access to the Academy (including many hours of training videos, downloadable tools and proven marketing examples)

…and much MUCH more.

As you can see, the AJ Mastermind is very ‘hands-on’. We don’t just teach; we are implementing the same systems and strategies we show you in our own agency, every day. Not only that, but we share all our results with you too, so you can avoid our mistakes and duplicate our successes.

‘You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with’
– Jim Rohn

Being an agency owner can sometimes be lonely. There will be times when you doubt yourself, second-guess yourself and generally wonder what on earth you’re doing. If you’re working alone, you don’t have anyone to bounce ideas off, share your successes or lift you up when things go wrong. Even if you have a team, trying to get them all on board and heading in the same direction can seem like an impossible task. 

Want to know more? We can pop some info over to you – just click the MORE INFO HERE button below.

More info here button

Sam and Phil

What to read next: The four types of photography you need to market high value homes 

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