The world of property sales has significantly evolved over the last 20 years. Unfortunately many real estate agencies have just not evolved enough. A very common scenario in any profession is if you question why are we doing something this way, you’ll often get the response;

“Well, we’ve always done things this way”.

Particularly with the advent of smart phones, the advertising of properties has shifted from the real estate agent’s High Street shop to the screens of phones, tablets or computers anywhere in the world that a potential viewer has access to the worldwide web and is viewing properties.

At Flamenco Properties we improve the way properties are marketed and sold because we apply our understanding of Lean processing and Kaizen and particularly of importance, to the world of real estate is that we employ Gemba Flow or Reverse Perspective to how we market properties.

What is this Kaizen and Gemba witchcraft you might ask?
Well in many typical manufacturing, sales and other businesses, the professionals in that environment think and operate from the starting point of how they have always done things and what they think matters. So for instance let’s say a car manufacturer guesses what type of car and colour will be in demand next year, they build thousands of blue sports cars in the anticipation that the buyers will come and snap up all the blue sports cars.

Gemba and ‘reverse perspective’ is where the car manufacturer thinks and operates in reverse from the perspective of the buyer so they do not build thousands of unwanted cars, they await the buyers order and then manufacture exactly the type and colour of car that the buyer wants. No fleets of unwanted cars parked in storage creating further overhead costs, to eventually be sold at discounted prices because the manufacturer grossly misunderstood what the potential car buyer wants.

How does this apply to the world of real estate and how real estate agencies operate?

The real estate agency decides (most often, wrongly) what information a potential buyer wants to know about a property.
How many times do you see a property location described ambiguously by it’s distance from an airport or distance from a town that could place a property anywhere within a 20 to 30 kilometre radius. Ambiguous locations is often one of the most common Dark Arts of real estate agencies.

At Flamenco Properties we use Gemba and reverse perspective to understand and provide the potential buyer every piece of information they feel is relevant to them instead of what the real estate agent feels is relevant to the buyer.

One such example of how a typical real estate agent doesn’t utilise ‘reverse perspective’ is the delightful little village of Constância in Portugal. Look at the photographs and particularly the videos of Constância online and you will be persuaded that this idyllic whitewashed village is truly paradise in Europe.

A potential buyer is searching real estate websites in Portugal and they see a delightful house in Constância and arrange to go and view the property with a local real estate agent. When the real estate agent greets you in Constância, possibly the very first question the buyer asks with a raised voice is; “You didn’t mention the factory?” and the agent will very likely reply; “Well I don’t think it’s an issue and none of the residents have ever complained about the factory.”

The factory in question with its enormous steel chimneys and endlessly loud industrial noise is the paper making factory on the opposite bank of the river Tagus that some might describe as resembling Chenobyl or Springfield nuclear power plants. If only the real estate agents were truthful about what to expect in Constância before the physical viewing then viewings would be from buyers who agree that the factory that towers over the idyllic Constância is not a problem.

VIEWINGS TO OFFER RATIO
As a seller of a ANY property, if you market your property in an open and fully revealing way then you will maximise to your advantage what is know as the VIEWINGS TO OFFER RATIO VTOR.

A real estate agent from a sales background believes that if he can just get a potential buyer to a property (often under false pretences) then that agent can use all his tricks and dark arts of salesmanship to influence any potential buyer to purchase the property. This type of real estate agent we believe will have a poor VTRO so that a property could possibly have upwards of 20 or more physical viewings to achieve 1 purchase offer, a 20 – 1 VTRO.

Another good way to measure a real estate agents performance and their VTRO is by the size of their Sales Fees. A real estate agent that likes physically showing any property to lots of potential buyers in the hope he can capture a sale will have more overhead expenses associated with dragging potential buyers around numerous properties. Their sales fees will tend to be high because they have to account for increased overheads of poorly marketing properties.

The real estate agent from a marketing background who understands reverse perspective will have a much better VTRO because they offer all the information a potential buyer requires so when that potential buyer decides to physically view the property it is because they are extremely interested in the property and very likely to make an offer. This is why at Flamenco Properties we feel that any real estate agency trying to charge more than 2.5% sales can not justify such high fees and they have too much waste in their process.

Minimising waste in any process so to provide a client with a better service at a better cost is the foundation of Lean and Kaizen and this is Flamenco Properties unique selling point.

ONLY 2% SALES FEE FOR ANY PROPERTY WE MARKET

NO BUYERS FEES

BETTER MARKETING

€100 REFERRAL SCHEME