What Makes a Sale

This month we speak to Eddie Mansour of Ray White Lane Cove, Eddie is currently listing five unique new developments in the Lane Cove area, his insight explains more about buyer requirements, market changes and how our approach is complimenting strong sales.

> How long have you been selling properties and why did you become a pure-projects specialist?

I have been in the industry for over 12 years selling in the inner city area. As a junior agent I was given opportunities to work with off the plan and new apartments and I discovered my passion to see projects come together and see high volumes of sales achieved. Lane Cove was rezoned three years ago which saw me focus purely on new projects.

> How has Lane Cove and/or the North Shore changed in recent times and what effect has this had on the prices of units and homes in the area?

Lane Cove hasn’t had any major development in the past 20 years with the North Shore itself seeing a major change of direction with many new dwellings built over the past 10 years. Locations that were once dominated by commercial and retail buildings have been replaced with apartment developments with demand not slowing down. Prices have fluctuated throughout this time but generally the North Shore property market has remained solid and growth has continued.

> Project Marketing is a competitive business, what is it that Ray White Projects offered your client/s that made you their chosen marketer?

Our biggest advantage and point of difference is our ability to offer our project expertise backed by our strong residential team. With over 1000 + offices we are able to utilise our project and residential team to achieve results that are above expectations. We understand local property markets and are able to look at what results have been achieved and the ability to set new benchmarks. A great example of this is our Aurora project in Lane Cove. We have achieved suburb records for 1,2 and 3 bedroom apartments which rival agents thought we would never achieve.

> How have your current developments catered to the demand for buyers and what role did you play in assisting them?

We gave our developers an understanding of our target markets from the early planning stages of a development that allowed them to create suitable apartments for the local area. Knowing what buyers want and what they potentially will pay is crucial to the success of a project. There are many agents out there that take the approach of just treating a sale as a deal. We try and get an understanding of what the buyer wants and needs are and give them the confidence to purchase. A great example of this is a buyer who after visiting the one of our projects over five times decided to not to proceed on purchasing the apartment. We discussed what their needs were and worked with the developer to give them a product that they were happy with. They paid a record price for the apartment and have since referred two more buyers to us.

> Who are your buyers, what are they looking for and what are typical prices for 1,2 and 3 bed units?

Buyers are becoming very educated in the process of buying off the plan/new apartments with specific interest in who is behind the project and it’s features and design. We are seeing an increased demand for study/media areas as well as generous outdoor areas.

To clinch a deal we have seen developers offering timber flooring upgrades to apartments at no charge which has been well received. In Lane Cove typical prices are 1 bedrooms from $450k to $600k, 2 bedrooms from $600k to $1.2M and 3 bedrooms from $800k to $1.6M. Most of our buyers are local people mainly coming for the North Shore, Hills District and Northern District areas.

> Our newsletter reaches almost 40,000 active buyers each month, has this been useful to profile your property and generate interest beyond your local reach?

We have had some good inquiry levels from this, it allows us to reach customers from other states and countries.