We Are Selling with Lee Woodward

Everything Agents Need to Know About Timed Sales with Brent Osborne

• Realtair • Episode 45

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We highlight the success of a timed sale, a digital property selling method that combines transparency, notifications, and a defined timeframe to drive buyer engagement and competition.

• introduce the timed sale as a digital alternative to auction, allowing registered buyers to bid online without traditional auction conditions
• provide transparency by notifying all registered buyers of bids in real-time, building trust and confidence in the process
• set a competitive guide price that reflects value and attracts both local and metro buyers
• run a pre-market campaign to generate interest before listing on portals
• launch the timed sale with a defined duration (in this case, ~2.5 weeks on portals) to focus buyer attention
• enable buyers to participate remotely, giving them time to perform inspections and contract reviews
• monitor bids throughout the campaign and encourage competitive engagement in the final 24–48 hours
• achieve a strong result through market competition, exceeding the initial price guide ($820,000 vs. $600,000 guide)
• deliver exceptional seller satisfaction through clear communication and superior outcomes
• demonstrate the replicable potential of timed sales for other listings and markets

A practical example of how digital-first sales methods can increase buyer participation, drive competition, and achieve outstanding results in markets where traditional auctions are less effective.



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Lee Woodward:

Hello and welcome to the podcast We Are Selling. My name's Lee Woodward of Realtair, the home of pitch, sign and sell. Sell is how we've been doing the digital sales. And many of you have listened to the How We Do a Timed Auction, but today's story is all about the timed sale. And the timed sale has had great success. The only difference that the platform does in facilitating it, in a time sale, you are not under auction conditions, meaning bound to go ahead, as you would be with a paddle. However, you are registered, you are notified, and all the other features of a digital sale are at your discretion. The transparency, the broadcasting of messages, and those notifications that go out to our registered purchasers. Today we've got a great story. We're going to Bathurst, where Brent Osborne shares his story of his first time sale on the platform. He joins me now. Brent, welcome to the program.

Brent Osborne:

G'day, Lee. How are you going?

Lee Woodward:

We're very, very well. Tell us about the Bathurst market at the moment and traditionally how properties are sold down there.

Brent Osborne:

Private Charity has been, I've been in the game about 15 years in various roles and selling for a large portion of that. And Private Charity has been. Auctions have never really, in the residential space here, is my experience, has never really taken off in Bathurst. And even in when the market was as strong as it was, you know, through last year and the early stage of the as of this year, the auction process just there's just a bit of a hesitancy. It's a small country town of about 50,000 people. So to go and perform on someone's front lawn and put your hand up to bid, we just see buyers maybe shy away from that method of sale. So you know, at the start of this year, I you know, I thought with the competition in the market that you know auctions would be the way to go. And Michelle from a sales associate, Brad, threw everything in the kitchen sink at a couple of properties that just should have done well at auction. And it just it just didn't happen. And it was until the you know price got put on the property post-auction that the market started, the marketing started to kick and buyers started to come through the doors. So yeah, predominantly private private treaddy, the auction auction space just hasn't quite happened in the small country town here in Bathurst.

Lee Woodward:

Well, what's brought us to Bathurst today is quite an interesting story. Brent, the whole team has been in intense training looking at what's going on internationally in the world of real estate. I myself have come down and performed many sessions there with the team. And this team-based approach that you guys all have where you all work on the properties together, so that yes, you might have brought it to the marketplace, but everyone's working to get that sold as has been one result. But you've just brought a property to the market under a brand new technique of sale, which was a timed sale. And the property that caused all the attention was Clear Creek. Take us into what happened and what the result was.

Brent Osborne:

Yeah, oh, phenomenal result, as you know, mate. So look, I had some I did an appraisal for uh family. We were selling it uh by way of an estate. So uh mother had passed away a number of years ago, and these guys had come back to me after a few years after doing the appraisal for them. And yeah, look, obviously we we've got a new platform that we're using, and we thought it would be a good candidate for a time sale. And the reason we thought that is look, the property wasn't without its warts, the house needed some work, the the land, while it was a large holding of 170 acres, which is quite a big holding, was very heavily timbered and needed work. But we thought the price would be really attractive for that type of property, and we thought it would be a good fit, and the sellers were were open to giving it a try. So, mate, the result was amazing. As you know, we were guiding up to 600,000 and we sold it for $820,000 at the end of the time sale, which was just an absolutely phenomenal result. You know, I think it all started from the start of the process where we were guiding a price that was really attractive to the purchasing community, and you know, it's not about underquoting or underpricing and that sort of stuff, but it represented really good value. And we had a lot of people from the city interested, we had a lot of people from the local market interested as well. We ended up with 26 registered buyers on our platform. The bidding competition was was immense, mate. I know we were talking through it as well, and uh we were here in the office with the team having a beer, mate. We must admit, watching the watching the bids roll in, it was absolutely phenomenal. And to get you know $220,000 above the top end of what we thought we were going to achieve for our market in particular was just absolutely phenomenal.

Lee Woodward:

This has caused a national stir because everyone has their own thoughts about their area. And Brent, you know, a lot of agents in your town would think people wouldn't register for this. It's an online sale. Now, people have heard of online auctions. In your own words, what is a timed sale and how does that work?

Brent Osborne:

You know, obviously there's a time frame on the sale, you know, similar to that of auction to try and bring the competition to a head inside of a time frame. The platforms, really importantly, that we use, so buyers go on and register their interest online, as you mentioned. And one of the things when we were explaining this to buyers that really resonated was just the increased level of transparency for all the buyers that were performing. So when a bid gets made on the property, all buyers who are registered get notified straight away. Without us doing it, it happens straight through the platform. And the buyers can log on and see what that offer is, which I think is really important. And all of the buyers that we were talking to, that level of transparency throughout the process for them was just incredibly important. I think on the back of this post-COVID market where it was so competitive and there was so much happening of so many buyers. Um I think this post-COVID market where there was so much competition, buyers didn't know if they were getting taken for a ride or whether whether it was a genuine offer or not, whereas this you can see it on the platform and there it is. And we had 26 registered buyers on this thing, Lee. There is no way, me and my whole team, who are absolutely fantastic, there is no way we could negotiate with every single one of those 26 buyers and do it justice without you know using this platform that we've used where they can go and bid in competition themselves. So if for the buyers as well, it's not a timed auction, it wasn't under auction conditions, so there was a little bit more comfort there for the buyers to get involved and perform. And we know when there's more comfort from the buyers, there was you know, there's more people there that want to compete, and that ultimately resulted in a great result for the seller.

Lee Woodward:

And Brent, what was the time frame that you selected to okay, it started, you can make your offers, the end date, what was that duration?

Brent Osborne:

We had a little bit of an off-market campaign to start for about a week, and then we were on the portals for about two and a half weeks. A little bit shorter than your typical auction campaign, which are only four to five weeks, but we knew the interest level was was going to be there in what we'd done sort of pre-market, so we thought two and a half weeks was a long enough time frame for the buyers to come out from the metro markets, but not too long that the interest got stale and you know buyers started to drop off. So we were on the portals for two and a half weeks with a little you know, a week prior of pre-market activity as well.

Lee Woodward:

And did you have an opening bid or starting offer on the property?

Brent Osborne:

Yeah, we did. Yeah, it started at uh started at five hundred and sixty thousand dollars was the first bid. And so we had a guide of five fifty to six hundred, uh, which was a really attractive guide. And the first bid came in at at five sixty. The bidding, you know, I suppose kicked into life in that last day. We ended at five o'clock on Friday, which was, as I said, a convenient time for us to sit down and have a beer and and and watch the end of it. But so five sixty, and it sat there probably for the duration of the campaign, and then the last 24 to 48 hours, things really started to ramp up, and that's when we started to get a good idea that this thing was gonna, you know, was gonna go to some pretty good heights.

Lee Woodward:

The great feedback we're seeing with the time sale is the buyers have time to breathe. Yeah, they know they've got this time frame, so if they do want to do investigations or have their lawyers look at the contracts and so forth, it it's not a new method of sale because technically you were just on the market for sale, but the digitization and the facilitation of those offers and those notifications made it a very public but discreet way of selling the homes. How did the owners feel about the result?

Brent Osborne:

Oh, they were ecstatic, mate. I think they were in a bit of disbelief. I think we all were as well, really. Like to see it go to 820 was was phenomenal. So they were just incredibly pumped. You know, the interest that we had through the campaign was amazing, and you know, it was it was new to them as well. They took a bit of a leap of faith and trust us, and we really appreciate that. But, you know, to get a you know $220,000 tax-free over and above what they were expecting, you know, that's the equivalent to winning lotto, isn't it? I think, mate, they were they were absolutely over the moon. So, you know, it was a fantastic result. But we had bidders all over the state and some interstate sitting in the comfort of their lounge room making educated decisions when they are seeing the offers coming in. And I think that just made everyone feel so much more comfortable about getting in and performing, as opposed to traveling down to Bathurst on a cold morning and trying to put your hand up on the front lawn. Like it's just a very different set of circumstances. And we know if we make more buyers feel more comfortable, the more we'll we'll perform and the more competition will drive a higher price. And you know, I think it played a big role in in the successful result we got.

Lee Woodward:

Clear Creek has definitely become a national story as we share the great results of agents looking at modern multiple methods of selling real estate. I think there's always gonna be the traditional methods, but seeing what the professionals Bathurst has achieved in doing this and the whole team getting involved, because I know you've listed other properties now that are going down this same platform, and we're gonna see more great results come out of there. So, Brent, congratulations and thanks for sharing your story.

Brent Osborne:

Good on you, Lee. Thanks, mate. We appreciate that.

Lee Woodward:

And that concludes another podcast of We Are Selling. It was such a great opportunity to coach and work with this team. They made that decision to come onto the platform, learn a different method of sale to usual, using the platform for the offers, exceeding the owner's expectation. And in such a change market, such a great result. If you'd like to know more about the digital sale, contact Realtair on 1300 367 412 or go to Realtair.com and have one of our sales professionals take you through the digital sale. I'm Lee Woodward, thank you for joining us.