Reaching Buyers Who Don’t Live Here (Yet)

I met a really rich guy over 10 years ago that was selling a few million dollar penthouses (yes… a few of them). He explained to me how a young kid like myself (at the time) could essentially take over the luxury home market with some good old fashioned hard work and strategic thinking.

“You see”, he begun to explain, “the current top dogs have the market cornered, and most of the wealthy people in this City desperately want some other options”. He took a deep breath and said “None of us want an agent. We want Buyers for our homes -the problem is that we don’t have the means to find them”.

Interesting, I thought. “So… what would be the best means to find them” I asked.

“Well it certainly isn’t just cornering the market through local connections – most of the Buyers aren’t from here – they’re from all over the world.”

He continued “If you were to take your time and build out a list of top agents in all the major markets of the world, open lines of communication with them for the purposes of selling Ottawa as a destination and yourself as their contact to show your homes to – you would clean up”.

So guess what I did. I leaned into the Remax Network which has offices all over the world and started doing research and opening lines of communication.

As it stands now, I have personally curated rolodex of many of the top agents in China, India, Philippines, Nigeria, London and France. While Remax is in literally 104 more countries, those 6 that I mentioned contribute to the vast majority of immigration to Ottawa specifically.

So my strategy as it stands, is to regularly send these contacts reasons for moving to our City, updates on what makes it so attractive, as well as… you guessed it.. my listing inventory.

Now is it a guarantee that I will sell your townhouse to someone in Manila? Not really.

But that’s not really the point either.

The point is that I am constantly and deliberately working on my system to get your home in front of the best Buyers – and a major part of that system is to focus on Product Placement.. that is.. WHERE your home is advertised.

In today’s world, it’s just a fact that the local MLS might not have enough of a reach to find Buyers who aren’t here yet.