Building Industry’s Sneaky Sales & Marketing Tactics

Welcome to Home Building Like a Boss, the podcast dedicated to helping first home buyers in Perth build their dream home with ease and excitement. I’m Jamie, your host and go to building broker. Are you ready to feel empowered, in control, and excited about your building journey? I’ll help guide you with expert advice, insider tips and tricks, and real life stories to help you navigate the confusing world of home building.

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In this episode, I am going to share with you sales and marketing tactics in the industry. Exposing a little bit of secrets and making sure that you get the best out of your builder and avoiding these pitfalls. First things first, a builder is not giving you anything for free. Now, this is, let’s give you a free kitchen upgrade worth 50, 000.

Let’s pay your rent while you build. Let’s give you a pool for two grand. None of these exist. It is clickbait and is there to reel you in. Using sales and marketing to hook you in to then get you into the process in with them, sit down and have a consult. They’ll do the rest. Do not pick a builder based on their promotion.

The promotion is. Not real, it doesn’t exist, and picking a builder based on a promotion, you’re most likely going to end up in a disaster. Now what do I mean by this? Let’s break down some of these promotions. A good one that I like to use is, we’ll pay your rent while you build. Fantastic. Cool. I’d love for you guys to pay my rent while I build.

Great. Seems good. The reality is when you read the terms and conditions for this promotion, the builder is adding 10, 000 into the base price of the home to then pay you your own money, which is 10, 000 that you’ve just received from the bank up front. I’ll break it down even further. Base price of the home is 280 grand.

Now, instead of it being 280 grand, the promotion is actually 290 grand, which includes, we’ll pay your rent while you build. When settlement happens and goes through, the builder will then pay you 10, 000 of your own money that’s paid to them back 10, 000. It is great if you do need 10, 000. to pay your rent while you build and do it if that’s going to help.

But just know that is your own money coming back to you that you’ve just gotten from finance. This doesn’t work for people who have tight budgets. If you have a budget of 270, there’s no way you’re fitting an extra 10 grand into the base price of the home. You need to remove stuff. So how are you going to make that work?

It’s about being honest and transparent about these promotions. They don’t exist. Builders do not give anything away from, for free, and I think that’s the biggest takeaway. It’s to get you in the doors, make it look good, and then they’ll sort out the rest. The same thing here applies is for time frame promotions.

There are builders out there who are offering fast track guarantees, construction time frames in the promotion. Take a look at what other builders are doing in the industry right now and ask yourself, is that realistic? One, for fast track promotions of pre construction, most likely if you peel down the terms and conditions, it’s going to say Base plan only, no changes.

And what that means is they can get you through pre construction quickly because they already have plans, working drawings done. It’s very cookie cutter design. And they can just fast track you through because you’re not making any changes, you’re not really customizing the home. And if that works for you, fantastic.

If you want a custom design home, you want to make a few changes. And you lapse over the four month fast track, the terms and conditions that’s going to be dished out to you is all you made changes to the plan. Therefore, the fast track promotion now is null and void. So you need to really read into the terms and conditions that come with these promotions because every terms and conditions and promotions will have T’s and C’s that help the builder get out of the promotion.

Same thing applies for construction timeframes. It’ll have in there subject to trades, supply, COVID and weather. If it happens, the builder will use it to extend the timeframe and the promotion. They’ve just used you. Hook you in for the marketing, sign here, here’s the terms and conditions, but they’ll have a backup plan to not.

You need to find a builder who is absolutely delivering on these and they will still have these terms and conditions as well, but someone who is using these terms and conditions. With integrity and transparency, that’s, that needs to, that’s such a huge factor in how that’s going to turn out. Do not pick a builder based on a promotion.

I’m going to cycle back to that. Do not pick a builder based on their six month guarantee in construction. If it’s too good to be true, it is probably 99 percent too good to be true. Do more research. Have a look at what other builders are doing. What are their clients doing? What’s their experiences like?

All of that needs to come into consideration, not just the promotion. I can guarantee, in the really, really tiny little font at the bottom of the page, or the website, or the terms and conditions somewhere, it will say, blah, blah, blah. Insert builder name has the discretion to change this promotion and do whatever they want, basically.

So,

they can change and do whatever they want to work for them. The ball is always in the builder’s court. It never favours the client. They will always set these promotions up so that they have a backup plan. It’s just the way it works. So do not pick a builder based on a promotion. Picking a builder based on a promotion is one of the worst things that you could do because they’ve reeled you in.

They hooked you in with the click bait. What about everything else that matters when you pick a builder? Same thing applies looking at house and land packages online on realestate. com on domain on rewire. on builders websites, land agents websites. It will have a house and land package there, and then it’ll have a really tiny little asterisk on the side.

We’ll say house and land from 399. Like, Oh, cool. That looks good. 399 is within my 420K budget. And then you inquire, you put your details in and then you get 7 million sales calls. Which are really annoying and you then find out that the house and land package is actually four hundred and forty thousand to have it finished the way you want flooring to be put in, aircon to be put in, blinds to be put in, because the advertised price that builders put on house and land packages is the lowest, lowest, lowest, lowest cost.

Then it looks the cheapest because everyone’s driven by price, but price. Shouldn’t be the only factor of choosing a builder. Same comes with promotions. Promotions look good. Comes down to price and money. Price and money is important, but the other things need to be considered to choose the right builder for your home.

If you’re only price driven and you’re looking at promotions and the lowest house and land package, I can guarantee it is going to end in a disaster. And then, why did it turn into that disaster? You know, pick, look at builders based on timeframes, prices, clients, experience, what’s going on in the market.

There are so many factors, quality, trades. All of that needs to come into consideration, not sales and marketing tactics. They do a very good job and they will, it will hook you in. Stop, think about it, look at it, read it, do your research and is this right for me? Do not lead your decision making on a builder purely based on price or on their sales and marketing tactics.

The same thing goes for display homes. Display homes are built to showcase a flashy product to help close a deal. A display home does not give you a realistic expectation of what you’re going to get in your home. The display home has an added 100, 150 grand of extra spec in there to make the home look a mazing.

to get you to sign on the dotted line and build with that builder. But then when you give them your budget and they give you what’s included in the other spec, it is totally different to what is in the display home. This is because the display homes are used for sales and marketing as well. Display homes are great to walk through, get ideas, get designs, but keeping in mind that is not going to be a realistic expectation of what you’re going to get in your home.

If you have the money, it might be. Most first home buyers do not have that kind of money to be adding the specced up high high ceilings, waterfall island bench tops, wall ovens, overhead cupboards, integrated dishwashers, recess here, double vanities, freestanding bath with a skylight, It’s not all realistic to fit into a budget, but it makes the home look really good.

So you’re like, Oh wow, I want to build with this builder because it looks really good. Do not make a decision based on a display home looking really good because it’s not going to be a realistic expectation. Walks, ask your builder to walk to a current home in construction. That is going to be a realistic expectation of what you can get from the builder.

If you have any questions about sales and marketing, tactics, or you’re not sure about something, you are looking at a builder, and you don’t know if it’s going to be a good decision, please reach out, feel free to DM me. I’m here to help you through that process. And I help my clients navigate through this process as well.

Thank you so much for tuning in to the Home Building Like a Boss podcast. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode and learned something new. Remember, you’ve got this and I’ve got your back. Until next time, stay inspired, stay informed and stay confident on your building journey. I can’t wait to chat with you on the next episode.

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