The price obviously has to take into effect the level of finish and features of your development and it may well be above what is currently selling in the marketplace if your project is unique and outstanding. However for the majority of development projects out there – there is a comparison pricepoint and if yours is priced well above it – then don’t be surprised that the agents will have a harder time selling it.

Best way to understand the market and feel what its doing is to get out there and attend some of the auctions and private sales of off-the-plan projects. Interviewing marketing agents is worthwhile also, however be cautious of speaking to an agent prior to having done your own research. There is a tendency for some agents to overestimate expectations in the beginning in order to “win the job” and this may give you a false sense of price points. Being out there in the field by yourself, understanding what the market is doing, how the sales of projects are going – this is by far the best way to feel the market “pulse” so to say.

• Price the project right to meet the market
• Stick to your own pricing if there is no comparison for your project
• Typically most projects will have comparable sales that will guide pricing
• Do your own research prior to seeing marketing agents
• Take marketing agent’s advice with a grain of salt as some agents tend to overestimate sales points at the front to “win the job”

4 Critical Elements to Setting the Price Right

Element 1: Research projects for sale in the marketplace

The most accurate indicator of the market “pulse” is what is currently selling and at what rate. Researching comparable projects being sold off-the-plan requires getting out to open for inspections or auctions and speaking with the agents. It is always good to be seen as an independent observer without an agenda when doing this research, as then you will be presented with objective data.

Element 2: Present your project to a couple of agents or marketing agencies for appraisals

Ultimately the project is going to be sold by a real estate agent or a marketing agency – so it will be a matter of sitting down with them to have an appraisal put together for your project. If you’ve used the approach from Key #1 in Picking the Right Estate Agent – then the pricing that should come back to you will be reasonably accurate and optimally if you get a couple of appraisals – then out of those you can identify a middle ground for pricing your project.

Element 3: Stay Conservative with Your Estimates

Always remember to stay conservative with your price estimates as the market is likely to change between now and at your project’s completion when the valuers for the banks are going to be putting together their valuations. This way there won’t be any surprises and your profit margin will stay intact.

Element 4: Sell in Stages and Adjust Pricing per Stage

One of the essential elements to selling projects off-the-plan is to create a base benchmark and elevate from there. Thus if you are working on a large project – having the early stages priced a little bit lower – creates the “rate of sales” for the estate agents and creates “social proof” that other people have already bought apartments or units in the project thus “it must be good” mentality sets in. Thus initially you may strategically release apartments in the project that are secondary and leaving the penthouses or top floor units for later release when the benchmark has already been established.

Case Study

About 12 months ago, a Melbourne developer put an entire portfolio of 73 apartments and penthouses up for sale in Falls Creek, which is a snow resort with the market moving very slowly.

At the time it was considered to be a very risky strategy – however due to the amount of publicity this campaign had generated the project sales were completed in a weekend.

The properties were priced without a reserve price and were auctioned off to prospective bidders in Melbourne in one weekend. And from the reports, it seemed that the main objective in the developer’s strategy was to ensure that the sales happened rather than trying to maximise the financial returns on the development.

Valuer Peter Hay from Hay Property Group was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald on the 18^th of July saying that  ”At the moment, for all snow mountains, this has been the slowest year for 10 years,” says Hay. ”The only movement is for entry level property,” he says. ”Your real entry level, it might be $80,000 to $200,000, is generally where things are moving.”

On the 29^th of August after the sales had happened in the Age newspaper it was quoted: “About 250 bidders took the bait, making more than 1150 bids at a sometimes frenzied auction at Crown that lasted for almost three hours.”

So as an example of a sales strategy – the entire portfolio was cleared and as an objective to sell it out and exit that development – then it was effective. I’m not suggesting that this strategy should be employed for your projects, but as a way to test and establish a market benchmark – having some lower priced properties to get the buyers excited and buying – this strategy above could certainly work.

Metaphor:

Setting the price of the project right – is just like cooking a cake with the right amount of icing sugar on top – if the proportion is right, then everything tastes great.

Nurit’s property career started at a tender age of 15, as the Saturday receptionist at her father’s local real estate agency.

In her highly successful career, Nurit has held positions in a multitude of industry disciplines, including Property Management, Trust Accounting and Business Development.

Nurit’s current role, as Marketing Director at Motion Property has allowed her the ability to focus on marketing property in an innovative and cost effective manner. She has been involved in the successful project marketing of inner city developments such as Atlantis Tower, Barkly Theatre, The Coromandel and Habitat Apartments.

Unashamedly passionate about property, Nurit has a sound knowledge of investment strategies and a keen interest in developing the type of strong and exciting marketing plans that are destined to see her continue to make her presence felt well into the future.

Watch her interview to learn more about:

• Current trends and what developers have to prepare for at the moment to convert leads to sales
• Costs and budgets for marketing campaigns
• Social media marketing – Facebook, Linkedin and Google Adwords campaigns for projects

The developer had engaged a highly professional team of a Creative Designer to coordinate overall creation of all the marketing, Colour Consultant to develop colour schemes for the project, Web Design team and us to provide 3D imagery and artist impressions for the development.

Along with the imagery below – we created a set of floorplates of all the buildings in the project to allow the estate agents marketing the development to show layout and scale of each apartment.

As the development borders a scenic Maribyrnong river, some of the apartments will have beautiful views overlooking the river and views towards the city.

Visualise additional interior and exterior images for a large scale project. From the drafting plans – the spaces were quite constrained and overall quite difficult to understand for the purchasers.

Solution:

We created a the images with a lot of colour and clarity. This helped immensely visualise how these spaces would work for purchasers of the apartments in the project. Click on the images below to view them in large scale.

From the industry data, typical budget allocation should be between 0.5% and 1% of the total costs budget of the overall project.

This will include items as animations and flythroughs, 3D marketing imagery in exteriors and interiors, online and offline (print) advertising campaigns, dedicated website, branding and colour palette for the project and sometimes through to display suites where prospective purchasers can view the property’s finishes and textures from various rooms in the project.

The consequences of not allocating and keeping in mind a sufficient budget for the marketing stage of the project, could be quite significant as delays with the sales of the project can run into thousands of dollars in interest and construction delays.

The optimal solution is either the developer acts as the project manager and appoints all the appropriate marketing consultants or the developer appoints a marketing agency which does the managing of the consultants.

Key Points

• Create a Concept and Brand for Purchasers to Identify With
• Set aside at least 1% of total construction cost to marketing budget
• Keeping this figure as a percentage allows flexibility
• Visualise the Dream & Potential of the Development
• First Impressions are Incredibly Important
• Work with a team of specialists to develop marketing collateral

5 Steps to Putting Together an Effective Marketing Strategy for Your Projects

Step 1

Select the best marketing agency to coordinate and project manage the marketing campaign of your project. Alternatively, you as the developer will need to project manage the creation of marketing collateral for your project.

Step 2

Together with your marketing agency – appoint a creative studio to develop a Brand and Name your projects so that your purchasers identify with it and have a positive and compelling emotional response.

Step 3

Together with your marketing agency, appoint the right 3D perspectives studio to create the right look and feel in the marketing imagery to support the marketing campaign

Step 4

Using the marketing imagery developed in the previous step – further marketing collateral is developed – for print or online campaigns.

Step 5

Test and measure the Return on Investment (ROI) of either campaigns and depending on leads generated – add further budget to the campaigns that work best. Typically in the initial stage of marketing – all the campaigns are launched together – billboards, print brochures for real estate agents, online campaigns on portal websites such as realestate.com.au and Google Adword campaigns.

Case Study

We are currently working with a very experienced developer on a large townhouse project. Even though this particular developer understands the market very well, he still has gone out far and beyond the typical marketing scenario to appoint the following consultants: creative agency to develop the Branding of the project, web design studio to put together a website for the project and we are creating a large portfolio of 3D imagery for this project.

Ultimately the developer will be able to launch his project with a large selection of exterior and interior imagery as well as being able to position his project as a stand out development in the area with unique branding, high level website presence and undoubtedly will achieve better results having all the collateral in place as opposed to some of the other clients we have worked with who feel that one or two 3D images will suffice to market a multi-million dollar project. These have quite often fallen flat on their face when they launched their marketing campaigns.

Metaphor

Cutting Corners in Creating the Right Marketing Collateral is like Penny Pinching. In marketing, it really is – You get what you pay for. The right advice and the right consultants can mean thousands of dollars of increased profit or quicker sales when the market is a bit tougher. So as a last piece of advice, don’t be a “Scrooge McDuck”!!!

DCF Design Group has been a very succesful Building Design practice and for over 15 years has created award winning designs in both Individual Boutique Homes as well as Multi Unit Apartment Developments. As director, Darren Comber maintains a personal involvement in all design work and client liaison, providing an intimate, site-specific approach that sets DCF Design Group apart from the typical design firm.

In this interview, Darren goes through some of the reasons what has made his company successful, how they develop the initial brief for a client whether it is a family or a property developer and talks a bit about some of the other services his company offers.

Renato comes from a 27 year background in banking and finance and for the last 12 years has been working in the area of loan transactions from Home Loans, Commericial, Construction and Development projects including Joint Venture and equity participation.

The topics that Renato discussed were the current state of the market, recent case study involving one of his clients and how Finance Advocates structured a finance application to secure the most effective loans for the development of 10 townhouses and finally Renato talks about the future 12 months and what they hold for the developers looking to obtain construction finance.

You can watch the video by clicking on the link below:

Dr Clotaire is known for advising politicians and advertisers on how to influence people’s unconscious decision making.

In an interview with Response Magazine, Rapaille remarked that “the best advertising addresses consumers’ real needs….when you address their unspoken needs they welcome you.”

Depending on our personality, our reptilian brain may crave familial warmth, tranquility, power, or security. Fortune 500 companies have long sought out Rapaille to understand the reptilian hot buttons that compel consumers to take action.

It seems that Rapaille’s opinion on purchasing decisions makes common sense. What is better – reading dry statistics on a house brochure, or being excited by attractive imagery of the home together with an emotionally compelling copy about the property?

Selling a home isn’t just about getting a home listed in a few places online. It’s doing so in a way that captures the imagination of your prospective buyers. After all, reading home specifications alone could easily put you to sleep. It’s not inspiring.  So what can you do to showcase your project in a more captivating manner?

Key Points to Consider

• Emotional imagery compels your buyers to action much more so than flat statistics about the property
• Photos of nearby lifestyle amenities – ie schools, parks, public facilities, shopping and cafe strips are great motivators for buyers
• Emotional descriptions for the property’s key features rather than dry statistics – ie describing the bedrooms in the fashion of: “enjoy the beautiful outlook from your bedrooms windows towards the mountain views” versus 3 bedrooms.
• There is a statistic that says that we remember only 20% of what we hear, 30% of what we see, but 50% of what we both see and hear. So our communication impact nearly triples when we use visual images that are compelling and emotive.

5 Elements to Maximising Buyer Attention to Your Project

Element 1 – Captivating Name & Brand

Branding a project creates an exciting identity for your project. Add a name and then you have something for your purchasers to identify with. In the more discerning market of apartment purchases – it is becoming vital to have an identity for the project.

Element 2 – Adequate Marketing Budget and Imagery

As a rule of thumb, between 0.5% – 1% of total construction cost should be allocated to a marketing budget. This way, there is enough allocated in the funds to put together the right team including a creative agency, 3D artist impressions agency, offline and online marketing campaigns and other items.

Element 3 – Lifestyle, Surrounds and Amenity

It is crucial for the purchasers to understand what kind of future lifestyle they can experience if they are purchasing the property to live in or what their tenants can experience if the property is going to be an investment. Obviously the more amenity surrounding the property – the more appealing the property becomes – hence you need to make sure to include as much information as possible and once again – the more visual it is – then the more memorable it becomes.

Element 4 – Exciting Fit-out & Visual Specification

In most projects today, an interior designer plays a very large role and a very important one at that too. To attract and captivate the purchasers – a professionally developed colour schedule and specifications that shows off the latest trends could well make your project win over many others which are put together by the developer, the agent or the builder of the project.

Element 5 – Team in the Project

Last but not least – to make your project captivate your purchaser’s attention is to bring up the quality and experience of the development team behind the project. Talking about the professionalism and quality of the build, presenting the artistic and specialised background of the architect and highlighting the track record of the developer – will surely make your project stand out versus many others.

Case Study

There are many examples of excellent development project marketing that we have seen around in the recent times and one in particular that we wanted to highlight.

We were recently involved in the project in West Footscray and the marketing team behind the project put together a very comprehensive campaign to the project. A creative agency was engaged to come up with the branding and the logo for the project. We were involved on the 3D artist impressions component and as the marketing director in charge of the project had a background in interior design – the interior fit-out was very detailed which made the interior imagery really stand out as it was on par with the latest trends in fashion and design.

Once the logo and the brand of the project was developed – then all the marketing imagery including the floorplans and floorplates carried the branding throughout so everything presented a consistent message of a high quality development.

In the end, as the project was launched – an online campaign was developed and email footers were put together with a link to a sales page that collected names and addresses.

Consequently out of the project in the first two weeks, out of the total project, 20% of the units were sold. In this current market – that is a great success!

Metaphor

There’s a saying in Russia – “Can’t sell a cat in the bag”, meaning that when something is so secretive and hidden – then it’s very difficult to sell it. So just like in property – in order to sell it – we need to describe it in as much colourful detail as possible.

The project was going through council planning and needed 3D renderings to show it off for marketing off-the-plan.

Solution:

Initially we sat down with the client, analysed the project and gave expert recommendations on the marketing packages out of which the client chose his preferred package.

When we started delving into the project, we were provided ArchiCAD model of the project which we then imported into our 3D Studio Max 2012 software and worked with the model to visualise its components.

First the interiors were produced as the project still had a couple of minor amendments on the exterior and after the exterior was finalised at planning – we worked to produce the exterior image.

Sounds quite simple, right?

If only it was so in real life – quite often I’ve seen developments presented to the marketplace starting from totally incorrect orientation and colour schemes, through to room sizes and dwelling arrangements.

As an example, if we were to take an area of Mt Waverley in Melbourne. This particular suburb is an inner eastern suburb, around 20kms to the CBD of Melbourne and it was primarily established in the 1970s. Vast majority of the residents are baby boomers living in single level houses with large plots of land.

The optimal re-development of such blocks is for townhouses and the developers in the know put the master bedrooms on the ground floor of these double storey townhouses. This is so that the baby boomers that purchase these properties – have the best of both worlds. Low maintenance and good security and at the same time they can stay downstairs and let the visiting or live-in kids sleep upstairs.

Unless you as the developer knows the demographic of the area and draws conclusions based on that research, it is too late when the property is already built to change positions of bedrooms. Thus a little bit of research upfront can go a long way to optimise your project and create the best appealing property that will sell quicker whilst others stay around.

Key Points:

• Sell what your market wants
• Research demographics and resident trends through council or local government resources
• Keep within the colour schemes of the marketplace – don’t try to fight the wave
• Present property configured to the needs of the majority of the local residents

5 Elements to Creating the Right Project for the Market

Element 1 – Thorough Research of Current Sale Stock

One of the best ways to start is by having a good set of questions for the local real estate agents to let them present what is currently on the market in terms of new stock, how long has any particular property been on the market for and what is selling really well.

Element 2 – Thorough Research of Demographics and Buyer Trends

The above research would only be as good as the current market situation, without knowing what the demographics of the area wants to purchase. Government websites like Australian Bureau of Statistics (www.abs.gov.au) and Department of Sustainability and Environment (www.dse.vic.gov.au) are both excellent resources to understand local area demographics and trends.

Element 3 – Integrate This Research at the Outset of the Project

Quite often if the client has no particular objective at the initial stage and comes to an architect asking them for a solution – they are at the whim of the experience and ideas of the architect. If on the other hand – the client had a well defined objective and solid research on what the project should achieve – then the architect will have a much clearer path of developing the solution within the parameters set by the owner.

Element 4 – Monitor The Market

Whilst having the initial parameters pre-set for your project, it’s still worthwhile to monitor the market and watch out for any emerging trends. What if a particular style of sandstone finish becomes really popular? There is always room to insert this texture into the project in the construction phase – just have to weigh up whether the extra cost in variations is going to be really worth it at completion.

Element 5 – Stick to Your Guns

As well as seeing the market trends and what is hot at that moment is great, however sometimes the best thing to do is nothing at all and what I mean by this is – if you have done the research in the first two elements, then that will give a solid foundation to the developments outcome. Finetuning the development while the planning application is going is reasonably cheap, however if you decide to make major modifications at construction phase – then that could turn out quite costly.

Case Study

Recently I was told of an apartment development that was going through a planning application to the city of Port Philip and the project was in Port Melbourne. It is a reasonably wealthy area with high likelihood of applications being refused at council level and otherwise having contentious outcomes. In this particular example, however the architect was very clever and created a marine theme through the project – they even went as far as having a “schools of fish” mosaic in one of the panels near the entrance the building.

This impressed the councillors so much that the project received unanimous council members support (8 out of 8 votes) at the council meeting which for this experienced developer previously was unheard of and he obviously was very excited to receive the permit at local council level.

Clearly this was a development put together with good research and experienced architecture which will undoubtedly hold the project in good stead through to the sales stage as that fish element will feature in all of the branding for the project.

Metaphor:

Staying with the marine theme – it is always easier swimming down stream then up-stream. Stay within the confines of the market place and innovate strategically rather than presenting a black sheep where the market wants white wool.