John Bendall owner of Re/Max Classic Group offers advice on marketing unique properties.

This may be a problem we’d all love to have; how do you go about marketing and selling and “over-the top” home?  A unique home often means a high end home, as it usually takes a great deal of expense to create an out of the ordinary living environment.  It could be an ultra modern contemporary with all the amenities, a replica of a medieval castle, or a super green environmentally friendly eco-home. So while selling a unique home may be a challenging experience it is also a rewarding one.

To sell a unique home you need to target market to individuals who enjoy a unique lifestyle, the home needs to define its potential buyer.  The home will often be very personalized, as it was probably created to suit the needs of an individual owner.  You can use the homes unusual features to bring attention to it, this unfortunately may also limit the number of potential buyers who will be attracted to it.

A couple of years ago I sold the home of a past client who had a large Victorian style colonial in Flemington with one unique feature that added an extra challenge to selling.  The owner had added, at great expense, a fully functioning professional recording studio.  He did not want to see his investment in the studio go to waste by tearing it out to make the home more attractive to the average buyer.  In order to target the type of buyer that would find the studio a desirable feature I advertised in music magazines and reached out to some contacts I have in the music industry.  .  Unfortunately the home eventually sold to someone who planned to remove the studio, but while it was listed it did present some unique marketing challenges and opportunities.

Some of the aspects of a unique home that you will want to bring attention to, which may have a broad appeal, are craftsmanship.  Often the things that make a home different need to be hand made or hand installed and quality workmanship appeals to many high end buyers.  Unique features that can also be somewhat generalized. An extensive work out studio could be used for a number of different sports, like dance, or yoga, or could be slightly modified, to be used a music studio. A barn or stable meant for horses could be used as a dog kennel or as a work shop for a mechanic or a studio for an artist. Seeing multiple purposes for an unusual living area will allow you to market it to a broader group.

If the unique home that you are trying to sell belongs to a celebrity or has some other type of notoriety, you may want to play that up in your marketing.  That way a potential buyer may see the unusual features as a benefit that they may want to boast about as opposed to something that they may want to change.

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