Selling with Love&Co: Beth’s Story

Love&Co wouldn’t be the agency it is today without our vendors, buyers, tenants and landlords. We truly value every client that comes through our doors, and we love nothing more than continuing to support them with their real estate journey for years and years. In today’s blog, we sit down with one of our vendors and Mill Park local, Beth, who sold her Reservoir investment property earlier in 2018. With a tenant in place, it wasn’t an easy feat, but Michael Love managed to secure a stellar result, much to Beth’s surprise. Here’s her story:

Love&Co: Hi Beth! Thank you so much for chatting with us about your experience as a Love&Co vendor. So how did you come to work with Love&Co?

Beth: I first interacted with Love&Co about 12 years ago, a long time! They used to help us with the property that they eventually sold for us. They’d source the tenant and I’d manage it myself. Michael Love was recommended to me – through my gardener actually! He still looks after my properties, that gardener, and he’d always know what I was selling and things like that. He said “Oh you should go and see Love&Co. Make sure you go to Michael!” So off I went!

Love&Co: So what does the Great Australian Dream mean to you? Do you think the dream has changed?

Beth: Oh it’s changed. The younger generation has to buy property differently. It’s not all about staying in your home for 20, 30 years now. We’ve been in our home 28 years and I can’t believe it. We’ll need to downsize, but we’re so close to my parents, it’s hard at the moment. Young people also feel like owning means they have to stay in one place, whereas with renting you have more control over your life and where you want to move to. But our kids now think that buy owning a property, it’s making them stay in one place.

Love&Co: Do you think that the great Australian dream is dead?

Beth: No, I don’t think it is. There’s some people that think that it is, but I don’t think it is. I still think it’s there. Everyone still wants that home and everything, but I think it’s getting harder to get it, with prices going up and culture shifting. Even with interest rates so low, younger people don’t buckle down and pay off their home. They do the holidays as well, the meals out, everything. When I was younger, going out for dinner wasn’t something you did regularly.

Love&Co: Do you think that young people today can reasonably expect to be homeowners? Do you think there’s any reason for optimism?

Beth: I think they can do it, it’s just that their expectations are a little bit different. It’s getting the deposit that’s really slowing things down, but if they put their minds to it, they can. It’s about making the right sacrifices.

Love&Co: So Melbourne’s north has changed really rapidly. What do you think has changed?

Beth: It’s changed a lot – it’s much more condensed and we’re seeing much more multiple dwelling blocks appearing. All those people have to park somewhere! The ideal home has changed along with that too. It used to be all about the big backyard for the kids to play, but it’s sad because the kids have gotten over the playing now.

Love&Co: So, how many houses have you sold in your lifetime?

Beth: Two.

Love&Co: And how many agents did you consider when you were going to sell the one you were interested in?

Beth: The first time we sold we met with about four. But the second time the first agency we considered was Love&Co. We didn’t need to shop around after that. They’d been so loyal to us with finding us tenants for our investment properties.

Love&Co: So if somebody is considering selling a house and they haven’t done it before, what are a couple of things that they should look out for or think about?

Beth: Advertising is important, but also getting the right information from the agent at the start. Some set the bar too high and give you unrealistic expectations. I don’t think you should skimp on the advertising, but at the end of the day, the agent’s the one that sort of has to guide you through it because you don’t know the market.

Love&Co: How did you choose whether you’d do a private sale or an auction, and what kind of guidance did Michael give you and expectations?

Beth: Michael guided us which tier of advertising to take, and then we used to meet with him every week, and he’d give us the rundown and I’d get it emailed to me to have a look at. He’d explain the people that had gone through and what level of interest we were looking at. He even advised us not to go to auction if the interest isn’t there, which was really interesting. We went with auction over private sale as it’s so popular in Victoria now.

Love&Co: So how did Michael approach feedback?

Beth: He was really upfront about the positive and the negative feedback. You need the negative feedback as well as the positive. And we knew what we had, so it’s not really negative feedback, it’s just the facts. That’s all it is.

Love&Co: Did you end up going to auction?

Beth: Yeah we did, but the market was starting to slow. There wasn’t much interest, and it was off-season too. Prices were starting to come down. But Michael managed to get two interested buyers, and as he said, ‘that’s all you need’. The weather forecast was awful and everything was against us at that time. We were so nervous, my partner wouldn’t even be anywhere near the auction!

Love&Co: Did Michael come in to speak to you during the auction?

Beth: Yes, he came in and explained who had come and who hadn’t, what the interest was like and everything. He was honest and upfront with us, which was really refreshing. We discussed it and he knew that we weren’t desperate to sell – if it didn’t get to the price range we wanted, we just wouldn’t sell.

Love&Co: So how did the auction go?

Beth: It was slow. Michael had to open the bidding with a vendor bid, so he had to work hard to get an audience bid so that it could pass in and be negotiated – which he did. Once he got the bid he passed it in and negotiated back and forth for a while. We were so surprised that we got the figure we did for it. We had prepared ourselves for the worst case scenario at that point.

Love&Co: That’s amazing. Some vendors are really nervous about auction day because they think it’s the end of the world if their property passes in. That’s clearly not the case.

Beth: No, Michael had already explained that if it did get passed in, then it goes to a private sale, and then we work at it that way. So we knew that it wasn’t the end of the world if we didn’t sell. We’d try it out and see how we go, and if we just didn’t, we didn’t. We’d just wait for a few more months and go back in again.

Love&Co: And what communication did you have from Michael after the auction.

Beth: Michael contacted us and got everything with the Section 32s and he did all of that with the solicitors and everything, and then he helped with the tenant that I had in the property and the notice periods I had to give and things like that. He dealt with selling a tenanted property really well, actually.  It was hard because the tenant had a baby so it wasn’t always convenient to show people through.

Love&Co: So, what qualities should other vendors be looking for … if you’ve never sold a house before, what qualities should you be looking for?

Beth: Honesty. If an agent is upfront and being clear around expectations, that’s a great thing. Someone who explains processes well is important too.

Love&Co: And so, just in closing, how do you feel Michael helped you get a good result?

Beth: I think his honesty. It was amazing that he could tell us that there was not as much interest as they were hoping for, and so we knew what to go in with. He could have easily said there’s a lot of interest and we wouldn’t have known. He told us he’d try his hardest to get the best result, and he did.