7 figure Attraction Agent
Tom Panos interviews leading real estate attraction agents. These agents share their strategies for writing 7 figures year after year. Simple, powerful and effective - you can apply these tips to grow your real estate business today. For more FREE tools visit: www.tompanos.com.au
7 figure Attraction Agent
The other agent is UNDERQUOTING — What should you do?
Auction Training from Greece
00:13 – What is the best time to auction on Saturday?
02:33 – If your property is on the market and there’s a competing property where the other agent is underquoting — what should you do?
04:25 – What is the ideal time to set the reserve price?
06:35 – Advice for inexperienced agents handling price & how to salvage the relationship and the campaign. The Buyer Excite Price vs The Vendor Ask Price
11:44 – Agent error in the Clearance Rate. There are 2 clearance rates in the market
12:20 – Should every property go to auction? These are the 3 determining factors
16:24 – July is Sprint month; it determines your listings for Spring. Real Estate Gym doors close on 30 July 2025
Is the vendor comfortable with that process? Or have you bullied, pushed, bamboozled, deceived, influenced the vendor to do something they didn't want to do? Number one what is the best time of the day to auction? On the weekend, what is the best time? I get that? I always have you know vendors that might ring me up might be a vendor request. Oh, I don't want to do it at this time, I want to do it at that time.
Speaker 1:I have certain real estate agents that hate morning auctions. The minute I say to them nine o'clock availability, 10 o'clock availability Matt, I haven't seen any fires when I am, I haven't seen any fires. Where I am, I haven't seen any fires, but it is fire season here. So let me give you my views on what is the best time of the day to be auctioning. It's irrelevant, it really is irrelevant. So I do. I get scheduled to do between 10 to 12, 13, 14 auctions every Saturday. I have auctions on at 9 o'clock. I have auctions on at 9.30. I have auctions on at 10 o'clock. I also have auctions on at 6pm. And the reason why is that auctioneering is, unfortunately is not scalable on people. It's you, you're required to be there, so you have to fit them in when you can. So here's my view.
Speaker 1:I do not think someone buying a commodity, an asset of a million dollars, even $500,000, is going to change their bearing on whether they purchase that property. If they're bidding at nine o'clock or if they're bidding at five o'clock, I think human beings will adjust their Saturday if they are looking to buy a property and they're not going to turn around and say I'm not going to that auction at nine o'clock, I've got pickleball at Eastwood, I'm not giving up my pickleball at Eastwood for that option. It doesn't work that way. You might go to pickleball and not go to the Apple shop to buy something and go to the Apple shop later on that afternoon, but if it's an auction, you'll go there and not go to your pickleball or to your Pilates or to whatever is on at the time of that auction. So I do not think time matters.
Speaker 1:However, I think there's a more important thing than time with auctions and that is and I get this asked often by agents and vendors and that is when you've got a competing property, when you've got a competing property right that comes onto the market that is located nearby your auction and you have an agent that is underquoting that property, which is basically telling the buyers in that marketplace, this one is going to go cheaper, marketplace, this one is going to go cheaper, which then affects the viability of the property that you may have. So all I've got to say to you is that, firstly, I think it's one of the most disgusting things that people do, and that is you've got a vendor who's on the market. Another agent comes on, goes in underquotes. It deceives all the buyers on the first property. They then go to auction. They realize it was all lies, they were never going to buy it at that price, and they destroy that campaign. So what have I done in the past? And I advised a client. The other, you know, someone that lives in my street was selling one of their properties, not their property in the street, but a property that they had renovated, that they were in a syndicate with. I actually said to them listen, delay your auction by another one or two weeks, let that result take place. It then sends a message to the market that you can't get it at this price. And that's what they did. And that property got sold at auction two weeks ago and they nearly got $6 million by following that suggested strategy. So that's what I would do. That's what I would do.
Speaker 1:If you're competing against a property that comes onto the market that they start underquoting, I would probably look at you know, postponing it by a week or two or dragging out the campaign to be a little bit longer. Get a question asked all the time by people is the ideal time to be setting the reserve price? The ideal time to be setting the reserve price, I think, is as close as possible to the auction, as close as possible to the auction. You shouldn't be setting a reserve price when you list the property. You don't have enough information and buyer intel to set an accurate reserve price. You should be setting it at the latest possible time when you've got all the information and activity. And if you work in a state that has registrations, you can actually have that final talk after everyone has registered. Let's assume it's a three o'clock auction. You can have that conversation at one to three, based on how many registrations have come in. However, the reason I say leave the reserve as late as possible is you want as much vendor education, is you want as much vendor education to be relayed to the vendor to the last second of that campaign, which is pretty much the minute before it goes to auction. That's when I would be setting the reserve.
Speaker 1:When setting the reserve, I always ask two questions if I'm involved in setting the reserve with the agent, and that is what are you hoping to get? And then what won't you take? It's never the same answer. If I say what are you hoping to get, the vendor might say I'm really hoping to get a million dollars. Today I was hoping to get one-one, but based on the vendor education that we've been having with the buyer intel, I've realigned my expectations and I'm happy to take one million. And then, if you ask the question what won't you take, you'll find often it's about five, seven percent underneath it. They'll say well, I'm not going to be selling under 950 and that's useful because it allows you, as a real estate agent and an auctioneer, to know that if the bidding slows down, you don't just sit there and cancel the auction, that you're going to go off and talk to the vendor knowing what their vendor take figure is Next question I get asked often is the biggest mistake agents that aren't experienced at doing auctions are, and what advice can I give them?
Speaker 1:Well, the single one thing that I noticed of unskilled agents with the auction system the single one. There's others, but the single one is how they handle price at launch, how they handle price during the campaign and how they talk price with buyers and sellers leading up to auction day. It is the single one thing. And I've got to say to you I've seen a lot of real estate auctions absolutely become dismal failures because what actually happens is it's the actual opposite to underquoting, it's overquoting. It's the exact opposite to underquoting. And I'm not saying underquoting is better than overquoting.
Speaker 1:What I'm giving you is an example of something that actually can destroy an auction campaign, and I'll tell you why. You go list a property the owner wants $1 million. You go list a property the owner wants $1 million. Like every property in the market on the world. Generally speaking, every vendor wants more for their property than what it's worth the first day you speak to them. That's a fact. Nearly every vendor also thinks they've got the best looking kid and the smartest kid. That's a fact. They're biased.
Speaker 1:So what you do is you say, okay, my owner wants a million dollars, even though the comparable sales are saying $800,000. So what actually happens is you go out, you launch the property and you say to the market owner wants a million dollars. What happens then is low engagement, because a $1 million chase by a vendor on an $800,000 expected price, on market value, means it ain't happening. Buyers don't pay a million dollars on properties worth $800,000. So what you do is you go out as an unexperienced auction agent saying I'm going to go tell my owners, tell the market, what my owners want.
Speaker 1:What happens then is no one looks at the property, no one comes through. No one comes through means you have no feedback. No feedback means you can't sit there with the vendor and say this is what they're saying. Not only that, when you've got no feedback, you have no reason to be talking to the vendor. When you have no reason to be talking to the vendor, all of a sudden you've got a relationship that starts to break down. And the reason it starts to break down is that most agents that don't have anything to say don't talk to the vendors. The longer you don't talk to them, the worse the relationship becomes. And then, eventually, what actually happens is the listing just stays stale and the vendor turns around and thinks I've got a bad real estate agent, which they have. They've got an agent that doesn't understand the system.
Speaker 1:So what do good real estate agents do? Using the auction system and pricing, they let the buyers determine the price and they make sure that they get buyers excited about price. They'll use various methods and particularly if you've got a motivated vendor that might be overpriced, the sort of dialogue and language you're using is hey, listen, I want to let you know, like any vendor, my vendor wants to get as much as they can get. I want to let you know, like any vendor, my vendor wants to get as much as they can get. I want to let you know the good news for you as a buyer is they have to sell. They will be meeting market. Since they'll be beating market, I want to let you know, I want to show you what market comparable sales are and illustrate them to them. That is a sort of approach and then you should be doing that early on in the campaign and then that campaign gives you feedback and then you may choose week two, week three, week four to actually then guide it.
Speaker 1:But I would say originally, you want to be using buyer intel as your pricing strategy, not vendor asking as your buyer guide and the reason why it's going to be better for your vendor to be pitching the property at a market where there's going to be buyer excitement. So that, to me, is the biggest mistake. And a lot of people underestimate what is called agent error in the clearance rate. That's right. I believe that there are two clearance rates in the marketplace. There are those that understand the auction system, those agents that have become very capable at the whole process, not only in the pricing but the way that they actually get buyers, keep them engaged over the one month during the campaign. So I believe that agents that are experienced in the auction system have a lower error and that means they have a higher clearance rate.
Speaker 1:So and should every property be auctioned? Listen, I talked about this subject two, three years ago and I had three auctioneers ring me up later and actually get stuck into me. I don't care what people's jobs are. I know I do auctions as part of my living. It's not all of my living but I've got to tell you not every property should be going to auction. End of story. And any real estate agent that goes in and says every property is an auction property is actually either lying or they actually don't have the right information. End of story.
Speaker 1:So what are the factors that, to me, indicate whether you should be going to auction? Number one is your marketplace, a marketplace where auctions are the way that people are comfortable working with. Are the lawyers in that marketplace used to the auction system? I've got to say to you, hey, michael, I've got to say to you that is important and I'll tell you why. Because if you go to a marketplace where buyers simply don't have lawyers or banks understanding that this is the way it's done, you've got to do a lot of buyer education in that marketplace, right, I'm not saying it can't be done, right, but you've got to be doing a lot of buyer education.
Speaker 1:So, is it an auction marketplace Number one? Number two is is the vendor comfortable with that process? Or have you bullied, pushed, bamboozled, deceived, influenced the vendor to do something they didn't want to do? And the reason I say you want the option, to want to be embracing your recommended approach, is that you're going to be giving them feedback. If you're giving them feedback and it's all negative, they're going to turn around and they're going to blame you for pushing auction to them and that's going to affect your relationship and then it's going to affect your trust level, and when there's no trust in the relationship, things fall down. When there's trust in the relationship, the terms become negotiable. So if you're pushing a vendor who doesn't trust the auction system into the auction system, they're also not going to be trusting you. And I would probably say another factor that should be, and probably the prime factor, is, as a real estate agent, when you walk into a property, you can tell this is an auction type property.
Speaker 1:You can tell man, I'm going to get buyers falling over this, even when it's in a non-auction area, because it might be this unique property and what makes it unique? It might be that street, it's the go-to street. It might be the parcel of land that is very different to everything else there. What I'm saying is it's not just another commodity that could look like. It's not like in a block of 100 apartments that there's all two bedrooms with car spaces, right, there's no differentiation there. So what you're looking for is for unique selling proposition type properties. They're the ones. And then, of course, there are certain marketplaces where everything goes to auction, because the marketplace has been educated to be an auction marketplace. The vendors are, the lawyers are, the banks are, the buyers are and obviously the agents are very good at using the system because that's all they're doing. Finally, team, I've got to let you know I'm going to enjoy the next one or two days. Then we're off to London for work. I'm going to the UK and going to sit there and hit work really, really hard and I'm going to let you know.
Speaker 1:Ladies and gentlemen, it's so important If you're a real estate agent and listening to this right now. We're entering the month of July. In the next few days, july is the foundation spring month. I'll repeat that again July is the foundation spring month is the foundation spring month. What I'm basically saying is that September, october, november and also late August, there is record numbers of stock coming on the market. Generally speaking, the six months of July to December, versus the six months January to June, in terms of volume is significantly higher. My agents always do better the last six months of their calendar year. The reason why July is a foundation month is the people that are listing their properties in late August, september and right through spring and early summer are people that are getting into gear, getting into work. Having conversations with agents in July, just like the conversations for your stock in February, happen in November and December. I'm letting you know your spring stock is happening as we speak.
Speaker 1:Make sure you stay close to your chase list and particularly stay close. Particularly stay close to the vendors that are not just your now vendors, not your hot category. The ones that I worry about are the medians, because they often don't get spoken to and then they come onto the market a month or two months later and and you think, oh wow, I missed out on that. The reason you missed out on it is they weren't top-of-mind awareness. David Packwood, am I skidding around over there for Sydney FC? I've got to tell you, after last season, picking up a good centre-half and a striker from a team here in Greece wouldn't go astray. Anyway, guys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you so much. Stay well.
Speaker 1:I put a post up there yesterday talking about the importance of those that are in real estate looking after their health. I'm biased. I've had cancer four times. I know the value of wealth. It's not until something's taken away from you that you really value it, and I've got to tell you it's self-inflicted for most real estate agents. They're buying things they don't need to impress people. They don't care about working long hours that they don't have to because they're buying those commodities. I'm not saying don't work what I'm saying. Sooner or later, let go of the ego, drop the crap, focus more about how you feel on the inside than trying to impress everyone else on the outside, and life will get so much better.