Most people will be familiar with the old-fashioned way of selling a property, it goes something like this…

Take photos of the property, advertise the property on the national property portals (Rightmove, Zoopla, On The market etc.) and then hope for the best.

Whilst some agents still work this way, at Amber Homes we have invested in both the latest industry technology and social media to bring a fresh approach and more structure to this process.

We spend significant sums of our marketing budget locally, letting the public know that if they are serious about finding their next property, they need to register directly with us using our intelligent Lifesycle system, as our properties will be marketed to those people before they reach the national advertising websites.

Lifesycle allows our buyers to enter their exact requirements in terms of very specific locations, styles of property, price etc we can give you, the seller, insights into exactly who will be interested in your property before we have even taken a photo.

These buyers are the cream of the crop as they are motivated enough to want to learn about properties before they hit the national advertising websites which becomes a key factor in getting your property sold for the maximum price in the shortest period of time and gives us and therefore you the advantage over our competitors when it comes to selling your home and importantly gives us the ability to have a staged approach to finding both the right price and the best buyer.

Whilst getting the property ready to advertise fully, we will send an invitation for our registered, motivated buyers looking for this type of property to see the details before even seeing the photos.

Advertising on the property portals from the word go can be a very dangerous strategy as many of the people visiting those sites are just browsing and can cloud the matter of getting the right price enormously. For instance, if 5 people come to view your home but the first 4 of them are just browsing, you might feel inclined to take the low offer of the 5^th person, after all, 4 other people didn’t even make an offer!

Therefore, it is critical that the first people through the door have jumped through some hoops to get there, this will show that they are motivated to move now and if they like the property, they will pay the best possible price to secure the deal as soon as possible. The fact that there will be more than one motivated buyer coming at the same time will increase the chances that one of these people will pay the absolute maximum price for your property in the shortest time.

But what if they don’t? Of course, the best result would be an immediate sale for the best price possible to a motivated buyer. But, if there is limited interest at this point, at least if gives us both chance to discuss the pricing strategy and marketing prior to a full launch.

So, we will review the results after ‘Round 1’ to assess where we all feel things could be tweaked before 'Round 2'.

Having made any changes required from round 1, round 2 works in much the same way. So, we are still communicating to just the highly motivated buyers on our system but we are now including all of the photos, floorplans, videos and other marketing materials before sending out the invite.

Our intelligent system will flag up to us who in our database has shown specific interest in the property and our team will proactively reach out to those highly motivated buyers to secure a sale, again, with the clear driving factor on price and your own personal goals.

In some circumstances, an open day works really well with so many highly motivated buyers seeing the property on the same day and all with the chance to get the deal tied up before the property reaches the property portals.

Again, if required, we will go through a review phase after round 2 to assess where we all feel things could be tweaked before round 3.

If we reach round 3 it is time for us to go outside of our own database of buyers and look further afield. The property portals are still a last resort as they are a mixture of serious buyers and window shoppers and after advertising there, you really are out of options other than dropping the price - which we want to avoid if at all possible, unless it is part of the strategy that we have agreed with you.

Our system links directly with Facebook and Instagram to try and find people with the right profile for the type of person that would buy your property to alert them that it is available. This is done through personalised campaigns to a target audience as opposed to just posting the property on a Facebook page and hoping for the best.

Again, if required, we will conduct a review after round 3 to assess where we all feel things could be tweaked before round 4.

If we have made it this far, we will no doubt have made some significant changes at the end of round 3 and may well be able to approach a new set of buyers on our own system but we will also release the property on Rightmove, Zoopla and On The Market, fully confident that we have refined the strategy enough that a specific timescale can be agreed before a clear decision is made on if either party wishes to continue, but both parties are feeling confident that every avenue has been exhausted.

We firmly believe that immediately putting properties on the portals and hoping for a sale are gone. More localised advertising through targeting marketing and putting your property in front of the people that want to see it is the way forward.