Luxury Real Estate

By Christine Watson
From her blog: Hide Your Personals! Protecting your privacy when selling your home!

Putting your luxury home on the market poses two very personal concerns:

1. Invasion of privacy: that your personal life will be on show;
2. Theft: your personal effects are prey to any “prospective” buyers

De-clutter your property before placing it on the market: this is my first piece of advice for those vendors concerned with their privacy being publicised to the world.

To some it means removing everything from bench tops, cupboards and shelves and to others it means keeping the home clean, neat and tidy. But how do you protect your privacy and hide your personal items?

Your home generally depicts your personal life, showing your taste in furnishings, colours, art, antiques and family photographs. Is opening your home to the public an invasion of your privacy? Absolutely!

 

The experience of Marquette Turner Luxury Homes shows that people buy the home that “ticks most of the boxes”. When selling your home, you should take the distractions away so the buyer can concentrate solely on looking at your home.

Furthermore, we are not great advocates of open inspections in a troubled market and it is important to appreciate that household-contents insurance does not cover the loss of personal effects during a viewing of a property. Remove the opportunity for theft and protect yourself as if you were a celebrity like Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise or Hugh Jackman.

Selling your home can be stressful enough without the concern that someone is taking an interest in your personal life and possessions.

Marquette Turner Luxury Homes we will not allow anyone to view your home without showing their photo identification. If someone objects they are not respecting your home and are not serious about buying the property. Only a luxury agency can truly protect your privacy.


Editor’s Note:
Christine Watson is a Director of Marquette Turner Luxury Homes, a member of Luxury Real Estate in East Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Founded on Australia Day 2007 by Michael Marquette and Simon Turner, Marquette Turner is a property consultancy company covering the Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria. Along with Marquette and Turner, now we have a new blogger providing excellent content for the Luxury Real Estate Blog. Wonderful! Thank you very much for the excellent advice, Christine. Don’t forget that both sellers and real-estate agents are at risk at open houses, so it’s best to be as safe as possible. The photo above is from www.flickr.com/photos/jef/1526987585 and it is the copyright of Jef Poskanzer.

By Janice Ridge

In recent years, there have been a growing number of real-estate agents putting themselves in harm’s way by meeting a prospect at a house far away from main roads and neighboring houses. The recent death of Lindsay Buziak, 24, who was killed last weekend while showing a luxury home in Saanich on Vancouver Island, has again reminded us that even in an upscale neighborhood there can be dangerous persons lurking about.

It is important to exercise precautionary measures when selling homes, especially when a stranger wants to view a vacant house at an odd time of day. This is even more important when showing luxury properties. There are more rooms, more grounds and more places for strangers to hide out, especially if the house is far away from the main road or if neighbors are few and far between.

When I started selling homes 15 years ago, I was taught a very important rule: never meet a prospect for the first time at the property. Always ask them to come to the office to meet you first, where there are others around, during office hours. If the prospect is not willing to do this, tell them you are sorry, but this is your rule. It is better to be safe than sorry.


Editor’s Note:
As the the Director of Membership at LuxuryRealEstate.com, and herself a licensed REALTOR®, Janice Ridge is devoted to coordinating the efforts of all of the LuxuryRealEstate.com Membership and Account Managers, so that each of our members is given superior service. Like Janice, I am deeply touched by this sad story of a young real-estate agent being killed while waiting to meet a ‘‘buyer” at the property. I already knew that real-estate relationships are based on trust, but I always looked at it from the perspective of the client. The lesson here is that REALTORS® need to scrutinize prospects as well.