Selling a Tenanted Property in Warnbro, WA. Agent or Private ?

I am about to undertake the process of selling my property currently managed by Professionals. I understand the market is far from ideal however I have a need to access funds which must be realised sometime late in 2016. Not urgent, but timely. There is relatively little equity in the home and I plan to sell it as a tenanted, managed property, as is, with no improvements.


To this end and to retain as much margin as possible I am likely to take up one of the numerous private sales channels as my current understanding of the classic sales model is that PM will take quite a considerable % of what may result from the sale. The property is currently valued between $330 and $420K


The purpose of this email is to enquire as to whether or not agents in this current climate offer a low engagement, advertising only service; or some scalable offering up from this. I can liaise with the client directly for access to the property by prospective buyers. In a nutshell, I would like to understand the costs, pit-falls, bad actors and other uncovered issues around selling a property. I live on the East Coast having left WA level years ago.

 

For a number of reasons that you've outlined in your post, I think you should:

1. Try and get rid of the tenant first before selling; and

2. Use a selling agent, especially since you live on the east coast.

 

Before anything, can I ask how long has your tenants been living there?
Might be worthwhile to find out whether they are interested in buying.
I have one Owner engaged a "professional" REA, maybe because they thought we PMs are not good enough. They spent heaps of money prior to sale, only to sell it to the Tenants who have lived there in the past 3-4 years. Ouch!

 

1) you clearly don't have an accurate idea of the value of your property, a 30% range is not going to cut it

2) you not only want to sell a property tenanted, which brings it's own set of complications, but you want to somehow do it remotely while living thousands of kilometres away

3) you do not feel the maybe 10k or so in agents fees saved by the mishandling (imo) of the sale of the property as above will be dwarfed by the drop in potential sale price Sue to 1) and 2) above.

honest question - have you really thought this one through??

btw your PM would not be the one taking a chunk, your selling agent would.

 

Absolutely agree with sanj, you need to know the end value, more important today than 12 months ago, get this wrong and it wont sell.

One strategy I would use is slightly underquote so you can attract the buyers, that will be a hard task in this market.

I sold 2 recently with tenants in place, not so great. However, if you need to sell with tenants in place the key is to work with the tenants, offer a slight discount on rent and most important is you have the right RE agent that knows how to work with the tenants to ensure home opens work and house is kept tidy.

MTR

 

Thanks for the feedback, really positive. Well in an ideal world I would get rid of the tennants, throw in some cash to dress the place up and open the property to the best sales opportunties I can. The reality is however the tenant basically covers the mortage and currently I would be absolutely ruined trying to cover this myself with my current finances. So ideal it may not be, but the cut-over from owner to ex-owner needs to be pretty much seamless. No, I have not thought this through as per my "I am about to undertake the process of selling my property", hence the thought process started this morning and I am grateful for everyone joining this process. Welcome to my brain, please ignore the mess. The 30% variance was a throw in from the Westpac link that appeared in my banking, showing their perceived value range and is simply a starting point. As I move forward either with or without a sales agent I will get a more realistic price. Lastly I have a very good realtionship with the tenants having known them personally for many years. I will give them another offer to buy the place but it's pretty unlikely that they will be able to. Covering the mortgage is OK, finding the deposit etc etc etc not so.

 

Lastly, Pumpkin; thanks. I really like my PM and would rather give her the chance to make a bit by helping facilitate the sale rather than $10K to a sales professional for what may or may not be a more profitable process.