Why has my house not sold?

Why has my house not sold?

If Spanish Property was in a Shop, it would be in a corner, on a shelf marked as 'REDUCED TO CLEAR'.

Why has my house not sold? is a question I have heard a lot over the past year. Selling Property over the past couple of years has been tough for many real estate agents( Boohoo I here you cry). But this has been a lot tougher for many real estate agents in Spain. And Spain's Costa del Sol area has not been left out.

I moved to Spain 10 years ago and as a builder set up my own construction company, concentrating on Reforms and New builds in Spain . We have a very good client base and have been largely untouched by recession. For many years we worked hard to keep up with demand and have seen some very good times.

It was while we was with a customer 3 years ago that we over heard his conversation with the local real estate agent "I'm not paying you 8% commission" he shouted down the phone. When he had calmed down, he told us that at 8% it was in fact one of the cheapest in the area. After a long conversation he asked us if we could do him a favour and put his property on our website. We asked for advise from our solicitor and he told us that this was fine as we had set up our company to deal with 'all things property related' . What would we charge future customers for selling a property (if such an event should ever happen). So 5% was considered cheap by our 1st customer and the deal was done.

To our surprise (and I think luck had a lot to do with it) we had a buyer for our first listing within weeks. What do we do now? we asked ourselves, having only ever built houses in the past and never thinking of selling them. That was the job for them bloody rip of estate agents.
again we spoke to our solicitor and he gladly took over ( with agreement from the seller) and at the end gave us our 5% commission. Happy Days!

We now had to look for more properties to put on our website. You would not know how hard that was, trying to get permission from home owners to place there property on our website, free of charge until sold by us. Doors Slammed in our faces. " We already have our property up with 6 agents" would be another comment. "Why not seven then" we would say. "It won't cost you a penny until sold" but doors still slammed.
After several weeks we managed to finally convince some home owners to take us up on our offer, with the knowledge that they would be 'Quid's In' if we sold it for them.

I redesigned my website and added the properties. Advertised on property websites, blogged and sometimes may have even spammed. The website started to get hits. We could not have wished for a better start for our new business direction. Soon buyers would make offers and the wise would accept them. Great for us, more Sales.

But then Disaster

I had Spammed once too often , I commented on a yahoo page about someone travelling to Spain and listed my website as a good place to start ( thinking this was good information for anyone travelling to Spain's Costa del Sol area)
The result was Yahoo deleted my account. All my contacts over the past 8 years of building in Spain and my new contacts. All Gone. As well as all my login information on all my social networking sites, All my free ads around the world and all my paid advertising links. The lot.
Soon the hits to my website started to slowly drop then plummet like a stone.

I had to Start again from scratch. Building up 8 years of contacts and links was going to be a challenge. But I only had myself to blame.

After weeks and weeks of endless typing, tweeting, blogging and ad campaigns I was still only 10 % done. My website had suffered badly.
More typing more blogging and more numbers to collect from past clients and soon I could concentrate on building and selling property again.
But the buyers didn't seem to be there any more. Was it that my website had been blocked because of my spamming mistake or was there no one buying? Soon I had my answer. Real estate agents were closing their shops and going bust. At the same time the building work was falling away for others, we still had work but nolonger took on extra hands for larger work.

Our website shows signs of recovery

While still busy reforming and repairing property for clients, we noticed small changes in 'hits' to our website on the property for sale side. Then the pattern started to show that people were still looking for property, but right at the bottom end of the market. We needed low priced property and fast or we could miss out on potential buyers. So back to the streets we went but this time with a printout of our site stats ( not great by large scale real estate agents standards but for a building company in Spain with a side line in property they looked good). We had success we had properties in the price ranges that people were searching for. We now had something to offer .

The Properties sold slowly, But eventually Sold. Then existing clients started to call with the same question "Why has my house not Sold". Our answer could only be that it was not in the price range that people were looking for. We could not say It was over priced because how would we know? Its only over priced if nobody buys it and people were still buying in these price ranges but not as frequently. The properties are all on the website but the price was just not appealing to buyers. " so what can you suggest" would be the next question . "If you need to sell. Reduce the price. If not Wait and see if you get a buyer" would be our answer.

Prices started to fall first by 5,000 Euros then 10,000 and keep dropping. Most clients had their properties up with other agents with the same reduced price but we seemed to be the ones selling. As a result we now have dedicated pages of price reduced property in Spain For sale. With the lowest commission fee that we know in our area. So not only do buyers gain from our bargain priced properties but sellers gain in less fees to pay . Its a win win.

It certainly is a buyers market at the moment with many reduced properties being sold on offer. So if you are looking for property in Spain don't forget to make an offer. Because you could miss that dream Spanish property if you don't.

Thanks for reading about my experience with selling Spanish property

Glenn Swingle

Swingles Casas Property in Spain