Selling your home: Sole Mandate or Multi-listing?

If you’re in the market to sell your home and looking to make a faster than usual sale, you may be tempted to list your property with a number of different estate agents, rather than a sole mandate.

“There’s a school of thought that the greater the number of agents listing the property, the greater the exposure to potential buyers and so the faster the sale.  Experience proves it isn’t so and in many instances such a strategy actually backfires,” says Lee-Ann Dobrescu, Head of Group Business Development at Hollard and co-creator of the Hollard Home Warranty solution.

Hollard provides some key reasons why a sole mandate is likely to get you far superior results:

• FOCUS: With a sole mandate you get the benefit of focus on a proper sales strategy, getting the pricing right, and most importantly ensuring that there’s a decent level of pre-qualification of buyers that has taken place. There’s nothing pleasant about opening your home to every Tom, Dick and Harry in a free-for-all, potluck situation where agents bring as many buyers to the table as possible, often with no pre-qualification done, in the hope that one will be suitable.
• ASSESS BUYER FEEDBACK: Buyer feedback is important, and with a sole mandate your agent is able to carefully consider all the responses in terms of pricing and selling points of your home and make recommendations going forward on how to tweak your strategy.
• OVER-EXPOSURE MAKES BUYERS NERVOUS: Potential buyers may wonder why a property is being listed so widely – they may think that there’s something wrong with the property or the area, or that it’s a distressed sale – which will either put buyers off completely, or get offers way below the value you’re asking for.
• BUYERS LOOK FOR AREAS, NOT AGENTS: Buyers look to buy properties in specific areas with features they need and like, and don’t go out with the intent of buying from a specific agent.  An agent with an area specialisation knows who the serious buyers are in an area and will be able to link you up with them.
• PROPERTIES ARE ONLINE – The digital age has made shopping for properties imminently easier and convenient.  Buyers are able to compare properties online and then register their intent directly with an agent and are unlikely to want to deal with more than one point of contact on a single property.
• KNOW EXACTY WHAT OFFERS ARE ON THE TABLE – in a multi-listing scenario, offers happen in isolation.  This means you may very well accept an offer from one agent, only to find out afterwards that another agent had a buyer who was willing to offer significantly more.  With a sole mandate, buyers compete with each other, not agents.
• DIFFERENTIATION IS POWERFUL: By providing exclusivity to the agent, and in turn your buyer, your property is imminently more appealing. As a seller, you can also bring an entirely new level of differentiation to the table by adding a Hollard Home Warranty to your sale, which makes your house instantly more attractive to qualified buyers.  A Hollard Home Warranty couples a professional property inspection to an insurance policy that protects the buyer and seller against the financial and legal ramifications of any defects that may emerge in the property for two years after taking transfer.   A Home Warranty can mean a faster sale because any issues of mistrust between buyer and seller are removed. It can also mean getting a higher price for your property as you’re less likely to be negotiated down with such guarantees in place – think of the differentiation this provides in a market flooded with properties for sale. To find out more email hollardhomewarranty@hollard.co.za or  call 0861 HOME 4U (0861 4663 48).

A sole mandate without doubt ensures that an agent is vested in getting the very best possible deal for you, because at the end of the day the best selling price, at the right time to the right buyer is good for the agent too.  Most of all, a sole mandate does not mean your sale will take longer.  To the contrary, it makes for a faster, smoother sale because of the laser-like focus, and especially if you package it with the peace of mind for your buyer that comes standard with a Hollard Home Warranty.