Self Selling Your Portuguese Property

Is Portugal a tough place to buy and sell houses? The statistics currently show a property boom, but in reality, Lisbon, Porto and the Algarve have been propping up the statistics, creating an unlevel playing field in many an experts eyes. A recent article in Bloomberg stated Portugal’s housing market, which created a bonanza for sellers and a cutthroat environment for local buyers, is starting to show signs of slowing down after the country’s post-2011-2014 international bailout boom.

Housing prices rose 8.5 percent in the third quarter from the same period a year ago, a slowdown from the 11.2 percent year-on-year increase in the second quarter, the National Statistics Institute stated late last year. This result marks the second consecutive quarter of decelerating home prices following five straight quarters of home-price growth.

Slowing Down?

Portugal’s year-on-year home price increase slowed in 3Q 2018 for a second consecutive quarter.

Source: National Statistics Institute

Still, Portugal’s property market is expected to attract a record 3 billion euros ($3.4 billion) of investment this year, mostly from foreign buyers, according to broker Jones Lang LaSalle. That’s up from 1.9 billion euros in 2017. The country recorded the third-highest increase in home prices in the European Union last year, Eurostat’s data shows.

The truth is, that selling your home in Portugal can be a slow process, particularly if you don’t speak Portuguese unless of course you have help and by help, we mean a real estate agent. We all know an agent happy to try to sell your home for you. 

Now, before we start, I must emphasise that this is not a blog to bash estate agents, I have many friends who are estate agents and are very good at what they do. This is merely an article proposing an addition to what currently seems available in Portugal.

Remember the days when estate agents used to visit your home, measure your rooms and create a floor plan, talk to you about your brochure design, take some photographs, advise you on the best place to put your furniture, value your home and advertise it with a nice board on a sturdy post, all for a charge of 1% of the sale price.

Ah, the good old days I hear you say! Well my friends, it seems those good old days are certainly not present here.

In Portugal it currently appears the norm to ask you, the seller, to take the photographs, supply the paperwork for the property and of course your ID. You may get an initial visit to sign the paperwork, you may be asked to visit the office, you may even be asked to upload it. You might get asked how much you are selling your precious home for? You might even get asked why you are moving? But, usually, not a great deal more. No floor plan, no brochure, no price guide, no sign and certainly and more importantly, little or no marketing strategy.

It seems that some estate agents spend a very small amount of time getting to know your property, certainly not in the way you do and if by chance you do get a viewing through their company, it can inevitably end up one of two ways. One, with a poor attempt at selling your property, by an untrained agent and one who hasn’t spent enough time appreciating your home’s most desirable assets. Worse than that an agent that doesn’t understand the buyer’s needs. Or two, rather conversely, with you doing all the talking: effectively selling your own home.

So, with that in mind is the fee you are about to pay your agent, which can range from 4% upwards, worthy of the service you are receiving? Maybe it is, but on the flip side, maybe it’s not.

Now don’t get me wrong, everyone should talk to an estate agent, you really should: well the ones that operate legally of course with an AMI number and certificate, (anyone asking for a commission on the sale of your property who does not have a government AMI number is breaking the law, including and not forgetting property portals that take a commission on sales) but certainly and most importantly one that is fully trained in the art of Sales & Marketing in the world of real estate. However, if all you are going to receive is a service like the aforementioned, then surely you should consider marketing it yourself. After all, you do know the house and all of its great features better than anyone else out there.

So, let’s run this monetary example through your mind for just a moment. You want to sell your 250,000 euro villa but are distracted by the fact that you may need to sign to one agent only with an exclusivity clause, (Problem number 1) An agent who, incidentally, wants 14,500 euros in commission (Problem number 2). Yes, 14,500 euros, that is what the estate agent will want at a commission rate of 5%.

Okay, I hear you cry, but what about their costs and the hassle for me?

So the agent has overheads, they have to drive people around to view your home, they have to spend time at the property, they receive a lot of poor quality enquiries that they have to sift through, they have to put your pictures on their website. That’s all fair enough. But 14,500 euros in a country where the minimum wage is 700 euros per month? Well, you can see where we’re going with this. Also is it really that big a deal to write some text and upload some pictures yourself.

What you really need to know are some facts. Facts about the likelihood of the agent selling your home. The real nitty-gritty as to whether or not it will sell at the price you need. I’ve personally had the experience of different agents valuing my home within a range of 120,000 euros difference? How can this be? Well, it all boils down, as in any line of work, to just how good they are at their job and whether or not they are trained in real estate sales and marketing.

What you need to know

What markets are they targeting and how? Do they even know, or is that something that is dealt with back at the office? What portals are they using and why? How much internet traffic that hits their site, actually results in a viewing? How do they screen the potential buyers? How do they match them to your property? How are they going to conduct the viewings? Most of all, what are they going to do differently to everyone else to justify the vast amount of money that they want to charge you to sell your home? If you receive this information and are happy to pay the commission then everything should be fine and at some point, they will sell your home for you, but what if it’s not? What other options do you have?

Options

Well in fairness, not many, if any. There are companies out there that will charge you a fixed fee (Usually around 700 euros for six months advertising) to put your house on the major UK portals. That could work, but it’s costly without guarantee and you have to do all of the work yourself. Some sites allow you to advertise for free, providing that you do all of the work, but even they want a large percentage commission at the sale. There are also many people using Facebook. Facebook is a great tool, in fact, I would go as far as to say it’s marvellous, but would you buy anything on Facebook for 250,000 euros and do you know anyone who has? Maybe, maybe not...

The good news is there is now a new and unique way to advertise your property yourself here in Portugal.

Welcome to KipperTree, the latest property portal in Portugal that specifically targets foreign and Portuguese buyers in their own language, serious buyers looking to invest their money into the Portuguese property market. Our unique website utilises the latest SEO technology to target all of the countries where people are searching for Portuguese property, including the whole of Europe, America, Australia and New Zealand. We are investing heavily over the next 5 years to ensure that KipperTree becomes the number one free portal for property buyers and sellers in Portugal.

So how does it work and why should I use it?

The process is quite simple, register a free account on our website, upload your photographs and text and we will do the rest. Your advert will appear on our site and buyers will be able to contact you directly to arrange viewings. It’s as easy as adding them to Facebook, but with the security and knowledge that this is an investment-backed, professional property portal that specifically targets foreign buyers. Just the type of buyers you are looking for!

Why would people look at KipperTree?

Our investment has not only been spent on a great website that is easy to use, but also in the SEO behind it. SEO is an acronym that stands for search engine optimisation, which is the process of optimising your website to get organic, or unpaid, traffic from the search engine results page. Investing in SEO is how you create traffic to your site and we are using SEO specialists from around the globe to deliver high volumes of traffic to the site. So, not only are we attracting a high volume of traffic but the right type of traffic that will ultimately result in viewings of your property.

What are the advantages of self-selling through KipperTree?

Well, they’re numerous. You have control of the sale of your home and full control over how you market it. You decide on the text and pictures you will use to make your home stand out from the crowd. (Read through any poor quality agents website and see how many times the same text appears.) You also set the price and have control over when and how you change it if at all you do. You can also set various means of contact to ensure your house sale is always open and view how many people have viewed your advert. You need every enquiry acting upon and being closed for one day could lose you a sale. (There is nothing more frustrating for a buyer than not being able to get information when they need it and as most property portals are viewed on a Sunday or in the evening it seems crazy that agent’s offices are closed.) You decide when viewings happen and by selling your house yourself you have at least an extra 4% to ensure you can offer a better deal when the buyer is looking to make an offer.

There is no contract, no need to submit paperwork, no agent and certainly no commission when you sell your house. Not now, not ever.

So, how much does it cost to advertise on KipperTree?

The service is FREE; however, you do have the flexibility to add to your free package with various upgrades within the site should you wish to boost your advert.

The KipperTree site contains directories of companies: constructors, solicitors, banks, surveyors, insurance companies, real estate agents and of course self-sellers. Everything a potential buyer needs to make the move to Portugal or its associated islands.

As a totally free way to advertise, you can see why self sellers and agents are turning to KipperTree to sell their Portuguese homes and why KipperTree is destined to become the largest free Property Portal in Portugal.

What's with the name?

The Kippertree name was devised due to the owners two favourite things about Portugal.

The Olive Tree and the Herring, or Sardine as it’s commonly known here.

Innovative fish producers are now smoking Sardines to make the iconic British kipper appeal to more countries, creating something new in the marketplace, the Sardine Kipper.

As someone wanting to change the current market perception on how houses are sold in Portugal the owner decided on KipperTree as the site’s name and as they say, the rest is history.

Anyway, enough about kippers, we will leave you to make up your own mind regarding what makes the most sense when selling or buying a house in Portugal...