Off-Market Properties

What we think about a marketplace, isn’t necessarily what it purports to be.  Using well thought out systems enabled us to be able to find the hidden gems – the properties the market doesn’t know about.  Working with what we think is the market is not understanding what it is available – we reckon that the saying “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. Mathew 7:7. is something that we should never forget!

We were asked by a client to find for them some off-market opportunities in a resort town in New Zealand.  We have a system we have used previously and we considered it in the circumstances to be an ideal way for us to find what our client was seeking.  We also reviewed our options and concluded that we needed to see what was currently listed.  There were a number of properties, but it became obvious that we needed to simply ignore that as it was probable our client would be aware of what the market has – I think from memory, the client advised us that they hadn’t been able to find what they needed.  Their list of needs was not high spec – it actually gave us some options.  This initial research coupled with our expertise meant that we could tackle the market if we wished, but it was probably best to direct our attention to what we had created as a great approach to give our client the options they needed, but most importantly a choice of options.

First, we considered what was around with the agents – our reaction was what was offered was not what our buyer required.  So it was doing some “outside the square thinking”.  We had a brief but didn’t have a great deal of manoeuvrability budget-wise, but that was ok, we saw plenty of trade-offs in finding a solution for our client.

Our activities commenced with a review of what we knew.  We were able to identify our market with little effort so off we headed.  We identified and communicated with the appropriate property owners and produced a list of some 67 potential properties that would suit our client.  We made contact through a variety of methods we have developed and then the phone started to ring.  On day 2 of our promotion, we got three calls and were getting excited.  Over the next week, there were a further six calls, so after a week, we had received a mammoth nine responses – great or so we thought!!.  Even at that stage, we had the properties that would give our client a great choice and then the hard work started with us having to get information about the identified properties.  The phone continued ringing and finally, just a month after the first contact was made, we received our 19th response.  Now my calculator was telling me that our response rate was a massive 28% – this was far and away our best response to a need to find a seller.

The result was that we were able to find a great solution for our buyer, but the real issue was we had plenty of opportunities in the way of off-market listings, so we had to consider what the solution was for us.  Well quite simply the best thing was to present our cases to potential buyers and whilst this exercise is a still a “work in progress”, we reckon that this system, what we can do for any client is a winner.  It is short in duration, time efficient but most importantly it puts us in a position where we can say to potential buyers that we have a range of properties that they could purchase that the market doesn’t even know is for sale.

What we learned:

• The market doesn’t always know about everything that is for sale – there are a lot of properties that might be sold and the vendors are keen to find the buyers;
• Only one of our 19 responses resulted in a listing with an agent;
• There are buyers out there looking for properties, but they are not always aware of what they are;
• There are some very good opportunities just waiting to be introduced to the market; but most importantly
• Vendors are often not even aware of their marketplace – we know from experience that if you ask, you will have a good chance of getting what you want.

Three months after the job was done, we still have a list of potential sellers who simply need to be reminded of our contact – we try to deal with these vendor needs in a timely manner, but the value of properties is multi-millions.

Our initial buyer didn’t, in fact buy what we found for them – their circumstances changed, but we weren’t really that concerned as we had plenty of opportunities that we can work through, because few, if any of the vendors were in any real, hurry to act.  We remain in control though as sooner or later, we will get several deals completed for our clients.

I guess the moral of the story is this – if you are a commercial property owner seeking to buy, then you might like to make contact with us so that we can replicate our devices and find the solution to your needs.  It really is that simple.