Easter Eggs

What they have in common with selling your home

Let me tell you a story about Creme Eggs. The Cadbury’s Creme Egg was first introduced back in 1971. The gooey chocolate eggs were so successful after the launch that Cadburys decided to start selling them all year round. Creme Egg fans were extremely thrilled, but Cadburys started to realise that their annual sales started falling.

After years of falling sales, Cadburys investigated back to when they were at their most popular and realised what made the little egg so successful in the first place. Customers bought more Creme Eggs and Mini Eggs in the four months they were available than they did when they were available all year round. So they went back to basics and decided to sell these products only at Easter.

So what do Easter Eggs and selling your home have in common? Well, let me tell you. The idea of limited availability and desirability is very important when selling your home.

Consider this: if your home is on the market for months and months or even a year, and buyers see that it hasn’t sold they will start asking questions, make negative assumptions and just like creme eggs not take as much interest.

“Why hasn’t it sold?” 

“Why hasn’t it got any interest?”

“There must be something wrong with it if no one wants it.”

“It’s been on the market for ages, there is no rush to chase it, it will still be there in a few months.”

Desirability is a massive factor when it comes to selling anything. No one wants something that no one else wants to buy and people always want what they can’t have.

Take a leaf out of Cadbury’s book. Instead of having your home on the market all year round, only market it for a limited amount of time to prevent your property from becoming stale.

We suggest that you take your home off the market for one month for every six-month period you’ve been on the market. So if you’ve been for sale for six months, a one month break is usually enough to refresh interest in your home. This way you and your agent can sit down and look at the factors as to why it hasn’t sold yet.

My advice – don’t drop your asking price right away, take a lesson from Cadbury’s and withdraw from the market and look at your marketing.

If you’d like our help to sell your home or would like to know what we do differently then feel free to get in touch with us. I am off to buy some chocolate.