When Melbourne agent Luke Saville uploaded a shaky walkthrough video to TikTok in October last year, he didn’t expect much. The clip was simple – just him walking through an apartment, captioned “What $500,000 buys you in Hawthorn.” But within a week, the property had sold, after two buyers who first saw it on TikTok started competing against each other.
That sale turned out to be the spark for something much bigger.
In the 12 months since, Luke, who is a property partner at The Agency in Toorak, has sold 25 properties directly through TikTok and Instagram, often before the listings are even advertised on realestate.com.au or Domain.
“Some of these properties never make it to a traditional campaign,” he says.
We’ll soft launch them through TikTok, Instagram or Facebook. If they sell, the vendor hasn’t spent a dollar on advertising.”
Luke’s strategy is built on meeting buyers where they are.
He specialises only in apartments, and most of his clients are 25 to 35-year-old first home buyers.
“Eighty to ninety per cent of the buyers who are coming through these properties are young first home buyers,” he explains.
“They’re spending a lot more time on TikTok and Instagram than they are on realestate.com.au.”
The social media listings didn’t start polished and Luke readily admits his first few videos were rough, (“I didn’t even know what one of those selfie stick things was. Someone told me to get one, and that smoothed out the videos a lot”), but he quickly realised that quality wasn’t the main driver of success.
Buyers responded to the accessibility and immediacy of the videos, even when they were raw.
“Once we sold that first one, I thought, okay, this is actually a very real tool we can use to pitch to owners.”
Since then, he has added another layer with an Instagram broadcast channel called the Soft Launch Club.
“It’s literally where we put properties as a soft launch to the market before they go on the websites,” he says.
“That channel now has about 1,700 members, and they’re all buyers looking. The last two properties we’ve sold have come directly from that channel.”
Buyers typically contact Luke through direct messages on Instagram or TikTok, often prompted by keywords he includes in the videos.
“So if they send me a direct message with the word ‘Riversdale,’ for example, which may the be street the property is on, and they’ll get an auto-response straight away with all the information,” he explains.
“It’ll have everything – the price, the next inspection time, owner’s corporation fees, the water rates, how many are in the building. By the time they come along to the inspection, they’ve seen a walk-through video, they’ve got all the information, and they’ve most likely got a contract if they’re interested. So by the time they get to the property, they’re so qualified it’s just a final check. That’s why these, on average, sell within less than two weeks. A lot of them have been a week.”
The savings for vendors can be significant, particularly when properties are not listed on the major portals like realestate.com.au and Domain.
“In our area, advertising is so expensive,” he says.
“It’s nearly $10,000 at the upper end. If you’ve got a $5 million house, that probably doesn’t bother you. You just spend another $10,000 and market it.
“But if you’ve got a $500,000 or $600,000 apartment that you purchased five years ago and you’re barely making any money, it’s a pretty pricey way to sell. With social media, it’s genuinely bringing 70 to 80 per cent of your buyers through the properties.”
That reach has also helped attract buyers who might not otherwise have considered certain areas.
Luke recalls an auction earlier this year for a two-bedroom apartment in Toorak.
“The young guy who bought it told me afterwards, ‘I first saw this property on TikTok.’ He said he never searched Toorak on realestate.com or Domain because he thought everything was too expensive there. If he hadn’t seen the video, he would never have come across it.”
Of course, not every property sells through social media alone.
“There’s definitely been some that we’ve trialled off-market and they haven’t sold,” he says.
“We’ll run it for a week or two, get ten or fifteen people through, but if nobody is willing to put in an offer at the right price, that’s when I’ll say to the owner, ‘I think now’s the right time, let’s push through to a full campaign.’”
But even in those cases, he believes vendors benefit.
“Even if we just go online, we’re going to be on realestate.com and Domain, but we’re also going to put it on social media, and you’re going to get an extra 20,000, 40,000, 60,000 eyeballs on your property. That’s a win-win either way.”
At first, he didn’t tell his colleagues he was trying TikTok, partly because he didn’t want to deal with mixed opinions.
“Probably a good thing, because everyone’s got different opinions, and they might have swayed me against it. I just happened to be out at the property, I took a video to send to the owner because they hadn’t seen it since the tenant moved out, and then I thought, well, I might just put it up on TikTok. It turned into a sale within about a week.”
Like many agents experimenting with video, Luke admits he worried about judgment early on.
“You sort of fear what people might say if they see it, or your mates see it, and they’re like, ‘What are you doing?’ But I got over that pretty quick. Once we sold the first one, it was like, okay, this actually works.”
For agents who are hesitant about listing via social media, Luke says it’s time to step into the present.
“Show the initiative and actually research and look into it. In five years’ time, there’s no question – every vendor will demand it. In my opinion, they’re missing out if they don’t.”
