Shachi - Property Styling

And today, Saatchi.

Yes, Got it.

Right. So I think we'll just wait for a little bit of time until some people get notified about the live going on at the moment and this video, because I think we've got some pretty good information to go through today, so. Cool. So it looks like some people are coming on, so. Yeah.

Yeah, that's good.

Cool. All right, well, we may as well make a start. It's Aaron here from Diagnostics and Finance. I'm a mortgage broker and I'm sitting with Shachi from B Property Proud. And we wanted to bring some information to you in regards to how we can get the most out of the value of our old home to help get our new home. So, Saatchi, can you tell us a little bit about what you do to be able to achieve this?

So I'm a property stylist in the Hills area, and what a property stylist does is decorate a house to look like a dream home for the buyers. So what I essentially do is present the house in the most beautiful manner so that the potential buyers can fall in love with that and can pay a higher price.

What would be the problem with having a vacant house and letting the agent sell a vacant house?

There are a few problems with that. Not that the vacant house will not sell, but it might not sell for the top dollar. And the reason being, when the buyers are actually moving through a vacant house, they are leaving a lot of things to imagination. So they'll walk into a room and try to imagine whether a double bed would fit in there or not, or if the house has enough space for their bulky lounge that they have at home, or if there is enough space for the outdoor entertainment, etc. So when the house is styled and it has the furniture and the accessories styled to the taste of the buyers, and they can easily imagine their lifestyle and they're not wasting time of their visit to the house in imagining a lot of things they can get past all that through. And then they're really talking about the numbers and whether they want to get that house or not. So it saves a lot of time.

Absolutely. I think a lot of us out in the market when we're trying to make a decision on buying one house or another, a wall is a wall, a kitchen is a kitchen. And sometimes it could be as simple as the agent having a measuring tape in their pocket could be one little difference through to having it fully styled. Yeah, you keeping that person nice and safe. That buyer is quite special to the person purchasing the house. They need to be nice and secure. Let's not leave it to imagination. Let's go cool. This property in amongst the 10 that we've looked at today actually stood out. And it stood out. Why did it stand out? Why am I keeping thinking about this house? And I think that's what we probably see some of our buyers having going around in their head.

That is what the emotional connection of the buyers to the property is so important in getting the top dollar for the property.

I suppose from a finance point of view with the emotional connection to a house, I suppose that comes back to the basic product. The basic product that I sell to a client is a loan. And I suppose to put it in its rawest fashion, it's actually debt. And I've never really seen someone come into my office and knock on the door and say, harrod, hey Aaron, I want to buy some debt today. They usually are emotionally connected to what you do and what an agent does as well and what they're selling.

Yes, that is so true. Everybody wants the top dollar for their money. Nobody wants to leave anything on the table, isn't it?

So what's the biggest house you've styled?

So most recently I styled a house in Bauckham Hills. It was three levels, five bedrooms and has a huge basement downstairs which could have been the teen retreat. So that is, I think on a 700 or 800 square meter block I might be wrong, but it's the biggest one that I've done. Massive, massive, fantastic.

And on a pricing model, one of the things that we find is that when I'm doing numbers on selling a home and buying a home, numbers matter in this case. So we've got to accommodate a legal fee and some real estate fees and other mortgage discharges and the balance of the mortgage that's owed on the property. And then we've got to look at the new house and any accommodation in between if they're going to build or whatever their goal is. Well on the other side we've got to look at what the land value is or what the total value is. Then the stamp duty, then the legal cost and the things like that. So people's, as we're, as we're showing people around houses, we want to keep them safe as we were talking before and leave nothing up to imagination. But the other thing that's going around in their mind is all these numbers about getting the top dollar for one area which will affect what they buy in another one. And with property stylists, what is an effect that we can see by spending a little bit of money to make money. Everyone's heard to spend money to make money. We hear it in business, we hear it in finance, we hear it. We can't go down and get a coffee to have a chat or well, maybe we can have a zoom meeting. At the moment, we can't go down to a cafe and not have a coffee. So to get, maybe even get a referral partner that refers business, we still have to spend money on a coffee, potentially. So spending money to make money. So in selling a home and trying to get top dollar, what could we see for people listening now, what could we see from spending a little bit of money style house to what they could buy?

Yeah, you have actually given the very right analogy of actually spending money on coffee when you're trying to win somebody's business. Property styling is a marketing tool. Essentially it's nothing else but a marketing tool and a presentation tool. So I'll give you a very simple example. Let's say if you want to sell something on Facebook, have you ever sold anything on Facebook? Product, any old item?

Oh, I actually did try my hand at selling two iPhones recently. I did get them sold, but it was a bit nerve wracking because they all wanted to check it out or check the battery or do all these different things to it. But I did get them sold. In the end, I sort of wanted to go back to doing my job as a mortgage broker.

Okay, so while you were actually preparing to sell it, while you were taking the photos to even list the product on Facebook, you would have cleaned it, made sure that the photo is correct and so much so effort for little item that you want to sell. And talking about the most important asset, the most expensive asset anybody owns, which is a property, not to present it well is such a mischance in their marketing campaign. So property styling is a very essential part of any marketing campaign when it comes to selling the house. So in terms of what they can expect is probably styling and I'm talking only average numbers here, it it can cost anywhere between 0.05% to 0.1%. But the return on investment, the industry average is 5 to 10%. That's an awesome return on investment. There is no marketing, there is no finance product in the market at the moment which could give that much return on investment.

Absolutely. So the net effect on the return on investment. To link some of the stuff we spoke about is looking at that person's choice, imagination, attitude and behavior. So basically we're taking a choice, imagination, Attitude and behavior and spending point nothing of a house value to get a 5 to 10% increase on just how we appear, which is really cool because what's that equate? So we get a million dollar house and we get 10%. That's $100,000. That's more than. Yeah, that's. That's in your pocket. And then at 5%, it's 50 grand. No one's going to bark at 50 grand these days on anything. Yeah, cool. Is color like, when we get down to it, when we're talking about someone's imagination and things, does colors and other things come into it or is it more a generic st? What do you. When you approach a customer, does color and style come into it? Or what's the thoughts there? Because you're probably seeing lots and lots of different buyers and lots of demographics across agents. If someone said, no, no, I want it red, I want it hot pink, where do we go there?

So both color and style play a very important role. So red, I personally suggest absolutely not. Because people are very emotionally connected to some of the col. Some people absolutely hate red and some people absolutely love red. So in styling, we tend to do more neutral colors which appeal to a broad range of buyers. In an open home, we don't know who is walking through those doors, you know, what personal preferences they have, what has been their past experiences, cultural backgrounds, etc. So we try to style the house in terms of the colors and the most neutral, most appealing colors. Not very bright, not very polarizing. Second, in terms of styling itself, all of us live and breathe around the retail homewares environment that we have. We see things pop up on Instagram, we see things in stores when we go out shopping, and they all look beautiful. So staying on trend is so important when you're styling the house, because whatever they have seen in the shops, if they can see something similar to that in the house, that actually kind of connects the emotional connection to be their dream house. That's how they get connected to it and that's what attracts them. Any old styling or just putting in furniture and accessories actually doesn't do a good job.

That's an interesting connection there with how styling works. And my brain goes off into different tangents there. You're seeing we've got something at the shop here, and then we see something in the open home here. And basically it's not. It's not because it's a good thing or a bad thing. It's just that it's connected together that gives you Another memory recall. A bit like if you're going to buy a car and it's, forgive me for the red again, the red car, and then you start seeing red cars everywhere and I suppose every sequence of this thing, not that we wanted to talk about psychology of selling a house and styling it today, but it does lend itself in that area and it's not that dissimilar to finance and things as well. So I like an uplift in a property's value as well because it just helps all around.

Yeah, true. So out of curiosity, if, let's say any seller gets a top dollar for their, for this house that they're selling, how does it affect their borrowing capacity or how does it affect your business or what you can offer to them?

Yeah. When we get as a talk with a customer, the customer usually comes in with an opinion of what their property is worth and sometimes that opinion is a little bit overinflated or it could be a bit underbought or they want just the most conservative. When we get to the actual real numbers, where a buyer is actually offering on their property and the property is now over and above what they have currently wanted to achieve, there's two aspects that comes into it. One is what are they trying to do for the next property? So we could potentially adjust their loan downwards and if they are in different percentages of the loan, that could actually save some money for them from the banking cost. Depending on what they're buying, typically a young family might be wanting to upgrade to land and a bigger house. Older people may stereotypically want to go from a bigger house downwards so as that it can affect their loan amount so it can become a cheaper overall cost of the new property. The other thing it can do is if we're building a home and most builders out there, commercial builders, and I suppose this is where some of the styling things that we link together again when they've seen a display home or those sorts of things, is that they all have packages. So it might be the difference between you getting the top notch air conditioning through to the extra 20 millimeters on the stone granite thing, through to the shower screens being frameless to being frames to the extra power points that you need for all the people actually at the moment staying at home and they need to power all these extra devices. So all these little things change the whole cost of the build. So the old home is going to have a big net effect impact onto the new home. And from a lending point of view, if the home is being sold whilst you're building. It may not be a borrowing cost that we might go after. It may be. Actually, I've got some cash here. How about we go to the builder and we may be able to get a nice little cheeky variation of the extra PowerPoints and the extra things without needing to talk to the bank or it might be at the front of it and we can go, okay, Mr. Bank, here's the signed, sealed contract. This is what we currently own. Let's get a bigger. Let's go bigger.

How exciting. This is just so good to, you know, so much extra money to spend on your dream home, your next house that you're going to live in.

That. That's right. And it's the dream behind it, isn't it? And it could even, it could even go further down the line of wealth creation. Like if we can get some more. If we've already got our new home set aside, we can go down the line of what other equity can we buy that other investment property? Can we invest more into our business? Can we put more into our children's life? I suppose the more money is really cool. What is really cool is the meaning we can put behind it as well.

Yes, totally. And nobody is going to leave money on the table for sure.

Sometimes we leave a little bit just to get that extra relationship, but we want to make sure everyone's looked after.

Definitely, definitely. That is really interesting.

So how could people get in touch with you? So obviously, whichever platform people are watching this on today, you might have contacts up there or there or there or down below. But just how can we get in contact with you? Do we go through a real estate agent or can we come direct? Or how does the mix happen for yourself?

Yes, either way, so people can come direct. My company name is P Property Proud. As you know, I have a Facebook account and an Instagram account that showcases the work that we have done so far. About 20 suburbs, a lot of happy clients already. So that's a really good sign. I'll share my other details with you as well and we'll post it for people who are watching now or later.

Fantastic. So I suppose, in summary, let's get top dollar for your home through being able to style it with a property stylist with Sashi. And let's get the top low cost lending, hopefully through me. There you go. So, yeah, thanks for everyone for jumping in and we'll jump on any comments as we, as we stop talking. And it'll be great to be able to help you on your next adventure with property and lending going into the future. Cool. Thank you.

Thank you, guys. Thanks, Aaron.