Tips on Selling Luxury Real Estate

The best part about a Luxury property is the exclusivity . Unlike an affordable home, you won't have many prospects to deal with while selling Luxury property. So it's imperative that you first generate these leads and then handle them efficiently to closure.

Social Selling. Luxury Real Estate buyers are from a specific circle and what you need to do is to tap the right audience for referrals. It helps if you've dealt with Luxury buyers in the past. These days a lot of marketing for exclusive properties happens on Instagram because it works. LinkedIn is where you can pay for a premium account and be able to send InMails to your prospects. Even though it's a cold approach, make it professional and add value.

Newsletter. This works if you have serious inventory to work with. If you're dealing with just a one-off luxury apartment then email marketing isn't advisable. Build an opt-in newsletter via website landing pages, posting interesting content on Social Media, giving away a freebie like an ebook, etc. Your opt-in newsletter will have a serious set of engaged prospects who see value in your work through your content. They will be the easiest to deal with since they've been warm to you thanks to the amazing content you create.

Networking. Keep the hook where the fishes are. You won't believe how many luxury properties get sold through a notable reference partner. In my workplace, I have had many successful closings only because a certain influential person referred my property to the buyer. To get into the network, do whatever it takes. Reconnect with your childhood friends who've made it big now, join expensive clubs where your target buyer is likely to be, learn an expensive hobby. All these steps will help you in two ways, one is a direct way through references and buyers, the other is you get a window into their mentality and what makes them click.

Positioning. Once you have a steady funnel of leads to work on, what you need to do is position your property in a way that it clicks with your target buyer's profile. Most luxury real estate is designed to sell itself, but a little tweak to match the buyer profile can really do it faster for you. For ex: In Dubai, most expensive apartments are the ones that are in supertall buildings in central districts and come with a specific interior designer. Does that work? Well TBH, quite a bit for the uninitiated buyers. However true luxury is always bespoke, one of my client was just happy to not have the stock interiors and furnishings and closed the deal happily with a bareshell where he can design the home. One easy to change feature closed that one. When you're presenting the luxury unit, do keep in mind the lighting, the time of the day (this can determine ambient noise, traffic, natural light, wind, etc.) and your own appearance :)

Price Escalation. Luxury Real Estate is also classified by price. If the last deal was of x amount then the next deal should typically be of at least x+1% amount in a slow market and x+upto10% amount in a good market. Real Estate has to be about appreciation and a market with deals overcoming each other is the most exciting luxury market to be in. 

Your personality. This point should be first, but nevertheless, you must invest in your personality more than anything else. In the end, people buy from people. UAE is a culturally rich place and a wealthy Emirati businessman from Dubai would buy a property from someone just because the seller spoke to him in his language and impressed him. You can learn a lot of tricks by following self-help blogs and by observing other people who sell things/services to you. Customers are your bosses and they can fire you anytime by spending their money elsewhere.

You can fine-tune everything in accordance to your market and property, but I've tried to give you a general outline. I've focused more on generating the lead for your funnel because that seems more apparent, however closing is an art and I wish you all the best to be a great artist :)