In 2017 I was at La Lumiere School in Indiana, on a national championship basketball program, training alongside players who went on to the NBA. Every day somebody in that gym wanted your spot, and most of them were good enough to take it. Nobody gave speeches about discipline. If you didn't have it, you were gone, and the next person was already warming up.
From there I went to Xavier University and Division I basketball in the Big East. What I remember most are the Wednesday nights on the road in New Jersey in the snow, legs heavy from the travel, playing in a cold gym in front of a crowd that wanted you to lose. You still had to prepare for that game properly, because the other team had.
I didn't expect any of that to matter in real estate. It turned out to be most of the job.
What does sport have to do with selling houses?
A sales campaign is mostly unglamorous repetition: the follow-up call on a Tuesday night, the third conversation with a buyer who's gone quiet, the open home nobody turns up to in the first ten minutes. Anyone works hard when a campaign has momentum. Results come from the weeks when it doesn't, and that habit is the thing basketball drilled into me.
There's no such thing as a small listing
A lot of agents rank their effort by price without meaning to. The $3 million house gets the agent's best Saturday and the $650,000 unit gets whatever's left. Buyers notice it, and so do owners.
I try to run them the same way. 6 Garners Avenue in Marrickville, a terrace that sold for $1.85 million, got the same preparation as 11 Croydon Street in Petersham, which sold off market for $4.5 million. To the owners of each, it was the biggest sale of their lives, and each one only gets sold once at that moment in the market.
What it looks like on a real campaign
At 40 Station Street in Petersham we ran 7 open homes, midweek ones included, and 162 groups came through. The first Saturday alone had 53. Most of those people were never going to buy, and every one of them still got a proper conversation, because you don't know in advance which one will register to bid. On auction day 9 bidders registered, 34 bids were placed, and the house sold for $2.311 million, $311,000 over reserve.
Auction day is the closest thing to game day. I tell owners to go somewhere else and keep busy, because my auctions tend to run long. They sign nothing on the day. I keep a phone on speaker so they can listen if they want to. Preparation decides most of what happens on the day, and the rest is staying calm while it happens.
What owners can expect from me
- Buyer feedback as it is, including the parts you won't like.
- The same preparation for a unit as for a house.
- Follow-up that keeps going after it stops being comfortable.
If you want more of the basketball side, read Up 40 at Half Time about my coach at La Lumiere, or why athletes make dangerous real estate agents. For more about me, see how I ended up selling the streets I grew up on.
From the desk of Ramon Raneal