The first thing I say to anyone who comes to work with Great Ocean Properties is that when you are dealing with our clients, prospective clients or buyers that we interact with, is I don’t want any “smoke and mirrors”. Just see if you can assist them with your skills to help them achieve their goals. By “smoke and mirrors” I mean practices that could be seen as deceiving or unclear. Our industry has developed a reputation for this and I personally understand why our industry is often frowned upon. Fortunately I am in a position to dictate our standards and there will never be any misleading practices at Great Ocean Properties. One of my pet hates and a source of much frustration towards the industry is not providing price guides on properties for sale. Instead it just says “Contact Agent”. Buyers hate this because they want guidance and in fact realestate.com.au tells us that over 60% of buyers overlook any property that does not have a price guide. It is classic “smoke and mirrors” real estate. Great Ocean Properties will always have a price guide unless on the odd occasion the vendors of a particular property specifically instruct us not to. So why does it occur? It typically occurs because the listing agent has over appraised the property to get the listing. They know if they quote the appraised price to the buyers they will not get any interest in the property. They then have some tricky dialogue to entice the buyers to inspect and appallingly, the vendors have no idea what the agent is saying to the buyers. The agent then goes back to the vendor to say “I’m sorry all the buyers are telling us it’s only worth $X” and then go on to list all the negatives of the property to justify why the original appraisal can’t be met. All unnecessary “smoke and mirrors” real estate practice. We like to quote price ranges as guides and this is in consensus with our vendors. That way our vendors know exactly what we are saying to the potential buyers who are looking. The buyers that look know that they need the budget to buy the property so no one wastes their time, especially our vendors who spend a lot of valuable time getting their property ready for an inspection. Price ranges do not mean that the vendor will accept anything in the range, they want as much as they can get. If the property receives a lot of interest then the price range can even be exceeded, often via a private auction. If it doesn’t receive significant interest then it may sell at the lower end of the range. Every property has its own sale journey but at least when aproperty is listed with us there is guidance as to what the expectations are and the buyers with budgets in that range are more likely to engage. If we can ever be of assistance in any real estate matter please do not hesitate to call.