Buying and selling luxury property is a lot harder than most people know. The number of luxury properties on sale in America and the number of prospective buyers is pretty low. This makes being a buyer or seller difficult in most situations. On the buyer end, how do you know that you have found all the best properties in an area when so many luxury homeowners do not list with the major real estate companies in your area?
That’s right; a lot of luxury homeowners look for alternative ways to sell their homes since they tend to not want large numbers of people stopping by. They tend to want someone who will heavily prescreen for buyers that are very serious so they are interrupted less and maintain their privacy. Sellers have a hard time because luxury home buyers tend to use a lot of personal referrals and word of mouth when finding luxury properties, so if you are out of that loop, you may never be on their radar. Listing your home with a major broker could mean lots of open houses with buyers that are not serious, resulting in a long listed house becoming even less valuable by perception.
Luxury Home Tour – June 8, 2011 by Phil Sexton, on Flickr. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Luxury Homes are Very Flexible Investments
Thinking outside of the box becomes essential to making sure you really get the home of your dreams. Many luxury homes are extremely customized to the preferences of the owners, so using your imagination is very important as a buyer. You will need to look past the attributes of the house that do not speak to your own desires and see the bigger picture. If the location, square footage, and general style of the home are to your liking, you may need to ignore the paint and fixtures. It is rare that you will ever find the property that is already exactly as you want it to be. It does not take much to convert the original owner’s wine cellar into the finished basement you always wanted.
For sellers, thinking outside the box may mean appealing to buyers outside of your state or even international buyers in order to expand your pool of potential buyers and drive up your home price.
Simple Luxury Home Buying Advice
Since a lot of great luxury properties are unlisted due to the greater emphasis on privacy among luxury home sellers, you will need to try to develop a rapport with smaller realtors instead of just using the major realtors or their websites. The most private luxury home sellers find a real estate agent they trust and that agent merely sells the property to clients they have personally interacted with. Even better, you should find a database online that specializes in luxury properties. Chances are, they will be very experienced at getting listings for properties belonging to even the most private of luxury property homeowners.
Do not be too impressed or turned off by the photos. Some great homes may not look so great in pictures, especially larger homes. Always keep an open mind when evaluating a home by its photo gallery. Do a Google Map search of the home to get a feel for its use of space and the character of the area around it. How far is it from the places you wish to go on a regular basis like shopping centers, or the services you may need in an emergency like the fire department?
Find your luxury property on http://www.luxelisthome.com/, the premier online residential resource dedicated to matching luxury home buyers and prospective renters with the luxury property of their dreams.
