For all the blood, sweat and tears and renovation wins and losses that come with The Block, at the end of the day homes are built from the ground up for sale. And while three of the five homes were bought by investors – Hannah and Clint’s home was bought by a family of five to live in – testament to the beautiful family home they built.
“For first-time renovators to make a profit on The Block, considering the fact they were competing against professional renovators, carpenters, plumbers etc., really it is exceptional what Hannah and Clint have achieved,” Peter Kakos, The Agency’s Victorian General Manager, explains. “It was an absolute pleasure and an honour to partner with Hannah and Clint on The Block.”
The 2017 The Block series has been more popular than ever with a national average audience of 2.427 million. We look at this record-breaking series and the three biggest lessons Hannah and Clint, and The Agency, took away from The Block campaign.
1. Know your target market
Whether you are upsizing, downsizing, flipping or investing, it’s important to know who you are targeting with your sale and this is particularly important if you are renovating for sale.
“We built our dream family home for a real family to live in. This informed the choices we made irrespective of some of the judgements we received around those choices. We knew we had a family lifestyle in mind and that led to a master bedroom for mum, the whiskey room for dad, the sliding door on the children’s room and more lawn space than any other home,” explains Hannah.
And this clear motivation to create a dream family home worked – soon a family of five will be making use of every inch of Henderson House.
2. The vendor and agent must have a good relationship
The sale of any property is a rollercoaster, irrespective of the circumstances. It is a highly valuable asset and there are always levels of attachment personally and/or financially. The agent’s job involves much more than just marketing the property and negotiating the buyer network, they should be your confidant throughout the journey. The agent should be knowledgeable about the local market, the type of property for sale and have your best interests at heart. This requires trust.
And remember, you will be talking with the agent each and every day, you want to feel comfortable and enjoy the process.
“My gosh Peter [Kakos] and I connected on an emotional level. I looked at Peter as a family man with two young children and he knew how hard we worked and totally supported us throughout the process,” Hannah says. “Peter expressed how proud he was to work with us, which meant a lot.”
Re-building a house from scratch with no renovation experience is not a task many would tackle, let alone in front of over 2 million viewers every night! The pressure on Hannah and Clint was enormous and they handled it with grace every step of the way.
“I hand on heart am so glad we partnered with Peter [Kakos], Sam [Babalis] and the whole team at The Agency. All the dealings we had with The Agency were so supportive and positive and it was such a great experience,” Hannah says. “A support network on our side was so important and everyone has been so emotionally invested, we have now built an ongoing relationship with The Agency's whole team.”
And that is exactly what the agent and vendor hope for when going through something as major as selling a home – an ongoing, long-term relationship. Buying and selling property is a lifelong journey and nothing is more important than finding the right home for you and your family.
Auction day: Hannah and Clint, Damien Cooley (L), Peter Kakos (R) and The Agency team
3. Have a strategy
In real estate there are always factors that will be out of your control, this might be changes in the market, interest rates or a buyer’s circumstances. On The Block, these factors are a little more extreme, a group of neighbouring homes all sold on the same day one after the other… It’s about planning for the unexpected, clear and constant communication between agent and vendor and having a clear strategy in place.
In both Sydney and Melbourne the exponential price growth has slowed, this means pre-framing your campaign with a clear strategy is all the more important. When it came to Hannah and Clint’s marketing campaign, Peter Kakos focused on a national campaign capitalising on The Agency’s national network.
The core elements of the campaign must be polished and appropriately targeted – this included beautiful lifestyle photography, emotive property copywriting and of course welcoming and informative open homes that appealed to families. The campaign utilised print and digital channels and there was a major emphasis on buyer networking.
From there the next stage was the auction strategy. The Agency was fortunate enough to work with award-winning auctioneer Damien Cooley. Prior to the auction Damien and Peter determined a clear process for the day with Hannah and Clint. The strategy was to push through and keep running the auction – keeping the momentum going. It was a challenging auction environment, direcly following house number 3. (Ronnie and Georgia) which had passed in and being the final auction of the day. The buyer pool was much smaller by this stage.
Damien successfully pushed the auction through to achieve every last dollar for Hannah and Clint, which sold $95,000 above reserve.
After three intensive months on The Block journey, Hannah and Clint are now focused on their next project. “We can’t wait to take everything we learned on the show and put all that experience into our next renovation. It is so exciting working out what the objective is with the project and collaborating with the best trades to make it a reality,” Hannah shares.
Well, The Block 2017 it’s a wrap!
