A well-connected agent helps realise the potential on a four bedroom Glen Waverley home
Samantha is a Sydney-based real estate and home improvement writer. She is currently Head of Marketing at OpenAgent.
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After you’ve been working in a particular job for years, it’s easy to get to work each day and just go through the motions - you know the job so well you could practically do it blindfolded.
While that doesn’t necessarily mean the job can’t be done properly, it wasn’t what Margaret Orvis was looking for when searching for a real estate agent to sell her home of 31 years.
With most properties in the suburb of Glen Waverley dating back to the late ‘50s and a couple of large, brand new homes springing up, Margaret’s four bedroom home, which she and her husband had built 17 years ago after a knockdown, was fairly middle of the road. It wasn’t brand new, but its bathrooms and kitchen had all been renovated recently.
A family home with real potential
Despite its potential - or in spite of it - Margaret said none of the three agents she and her husband sought out seemed to want to work hard to achieve as high a sale as possible.
“We were just looking for someone to do the house justice, because it is in an older area and we knew it was a unique house, so it’s not as old as what was there, but it’s not brand new either. Nothing needed to be done to it, there was nothing wrong with it,” Margaret said.
“We were looking for an agent to do the house justice, because it is in an older area and we knew it was unique”
“The agents we initially spoke to said, ‘Okay, we could get you this’, but they didn’t really seem to want to try. They seemed to just want to put it through and that was it, and I thought, no, I’m not happy with this.”
OpenAgent review from Margaret Orvis
Margaret’s husband then saw OpenAgent advertised one day and decided to just, ‘Give them a ring and see what happens’. OpenAgent got back to the couple with two referrals. Within half an hour of Margaret finishing her call with OpenAgent, Ming Xu of Biggin & Scott called and Margaret knew they had found the one.
Agent head and shoulders above the rest
“He was just head and shoulders above everyone else we had interviewed, and so positive.”
So what did he do that put him head and shoulders above the rest?
“What didn’t he do!” laughed Margaret. “He sat down with us and he went through the whole process. The area is becoming a bit of a hub for Asian buyers, and he had contacts in China and Hong Kong so he brought a load of investors out, it was mind boggling. We’d never sold a house before and so for us it was just unbelievable.”
“The area is becoming a bit of a hub for Asian buyers, and our agent had investor contacts in China and Hong Kong”
Auction in February
Ming held an open house every Thursday and Saturday morning, with each session packed week after week through the summer.
“It was just insane. We just thought, what have we done! All these people coming into our house, and people kept coming back and coming back. The street was packed out every time without fail.”
The agent recommended that the property go to auction in February, and advised Margaret and her husband to hold out until the date and not take any of the offers that began coming their way.
“We got to almost the last week and started getting a few extra offers but he said no, stay with the auction, and we did, and we ended up getting $125,000 more than others were offering,” she explained.
“The agent recommended that we go to auction in February, and we ended up getting $125,000 more than others were offering”
With the price reached at auction going well over their reserve, Margaret is happy with what she and her husband got out of the sale, but laughs that the people who bought the house are now heavily renovating it.
“How do you spend that kind of money on buying a house and then pull it to pieces!”
Margaret has already recommended OpenAgent to a couple of friends who are looking to sell, confident that the service can help them find as good an agent as she found.
“If we had gone with one of the other ones, I think we would have been well down on what we ended up getting.”
OpenAgent helped Margaret: Source a well-connected local agent
- get her property marketed to the right buyers
- To sell at auction for well above expectations
Looking for the right local agent to sell your property? Why not take a look at our free list of 10 questions you must ask before choosing a real estate agent.
