When a luxury listing stalls, the default response is often to lower the price. But Ray White Wilston sales and marketing specialist Elisa McMahon says the biggest opportunity often lies elsewhere.
A prestige property that fails to sell quickly develops a reputation and the longer it sits on the market, the more buyers begin asking the same question: What’s wrong with it? Vendors lose confidence, agents come under pressure and the conversation almost inevitably turns to price.
Elisa believes that’s where many second campaigns go wrong.
“A lot of the time it’s not really about the price,” she said. “It’s not just about paying more for advertising and lowering the price. In quite a few of my situations, I’ve actually sold the property for more than what they’d had offers come in previously.
“It’s really interesting how repositioning and communicating the right attributes about the property can just change the whole trajectory for it.”
Rather than assuming the market has rejected a home, Elisa believes agents should first ask a different question: Did buyers ever understand why this property was worth buying?
That question shapes every relaunch she undertakes and instead of immediately discussing price expectations, she starts by pulling apart the previous campaign, looking at everything from buyer feedback to enquiry levels and online engagement.
“I generally have quite a thorough conversation with the seller,” she said. “I talk to them about the campaign. I ask them if they had any offers coming on the property and whether the previous agent showed them the campaign statistics.”
With a background in marketing, Elisa pays close attention to buyer behaviour throughout a campaign rather than waiting until the end to judge its success.
“From day one on a campaign, if I’m not seeing enough saves on realestate.com.au and Domain, I’m making changes to the listing,” she said. “People don’t always look at those statistics, but they tell you whether buyers are actually connecting with the property.”
Campaign data is only one part of the equation though – the bigger challenge is ensuring every prestige home has a point of difference that buyers immediately understand.
“In the prestige market you really have to have curated campaigns for each property … it has to be a bespoke campaign,” she said.
“A lot of the time people are just applying a cookie-cutter approach. The positioning becomes very generic, so what I really look at is, ‘Where’s the unique proposition with this property?’ Then it’s about communicating that to the market and to the right buyers.”
That philosophy recognises a simple reality about luxury buyers; they don’t shop like everyone else. Unlike mainstream purchasers, prestige buyers are rarely driven by urgency – they’re patient, highly informed and prepared to wait years for the right property.
“A buyer I was dealing with last year had been looking for a family estate for three years,” Elisa said.
“They came through one property with me and then another property 18 months later. We couldn’t put that deal together and eventually they bought somewhere else, but that’s not uncommon.
“These buyers are taking their time, they’re looking for the right property and they’re prepared to wait for it.”
That changes the role of marketing, so rather than creating urgency, the campaign has to create conviction.
“It’s finding a story that’s compelling to the market,” she said. “Generally it is a new story.”
One of Elisa’s most successful relaunches involved a five-bedroom apartment in Brisbane’s West End that had already spent four months on the market.
Instead of simply refreshing the campaign, she looked at how buyers were assessing value. Brand-new apartments were commanding significantly higher prices, yet the resale apartment represented exceptional value, a point buyers weren’t fully appreciating.
“I commissioned a research report to communicate the value in this resale property compared to brand new,” she said. “We sent that out to the media, got coverage around it and used that research report with buyers.”
The campaign was ultimately rebuilt from the ground up.
“We also changed the photography because it wasn’t presenting the property properly,” she said. “Most of the time it is photography. It’s not taking it at the right time of the day or not having the right angles.”
The result was a sale within 24 hours of auction for more than the previous conditional contract.
Many owners assume an unsuccessful campaign means buyers didn’t like their home and Elisa often has to explain that presentation and marketing, rather than the property itself, may have held the campaign back.
“Sometimes those conversations with sellers are, ‘Your property is a great property. It just wasn’t marketed properly,'” she said. “The photos weren’t presenting it in the best possible light. You just tidied it up and had your own furniture in there, whereas realistically you should have elevated the property and invested in styling to allow buyers to visualise how they’re going to live in the property, not how you’re currently living in it.”
Having those conversations honestly is part of the job and integral to getting the property sold.
“I think that’s a big thing, telling clients what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. I’m not saying this to offend you. I’m saying this because I want to get the maximum price for you.”
She compares it to visiting a doctor: “You don’t want the doctor telling you you’re fine if you’re not. You want them to give you a solution on how you can fix it. That’s very much how I view my role as an agent.”
Once the property returns to market, however, the challenge shifts to rebuilding buyer confidence.
“Buyers absolutely have that perception that there’s something wrong with the property,” Elisa said. “That’s why I spend a lot of time educating buyers and helping them understand why the property didn’t sell.”
Elisa argues the industry’s instinct is often to chase a price reduction rather than strengthen the property’s value proposition.
“I think one of the biggest mistakes agents make is thinking they need to condition the seller down in terms of price,” she said. “I’d rather spend more time with buyers explaining and demonstrating the value in the property.”
That thinking also underpins her approach to auctions.
“The idea behind an auction campaign isn’t necessarily to get it sold under the hammer,” she said. “It’s about shrinking the days on market. We either sell beforehand, we sell at auction or we sell within two weeks afterwards.”
Ultimately, a failed campaign shouldn’t define a prestige property, she says; it’s an agent’s job to challenge assumptions, change the narrative, and give buyers a compelling reason to see the property differently.