Sellers: Sara Jennings & Brian McTaggart

Their property: A 1950s bungalow on 715sqm of land with 3 bedrooms on Remuera's northern slopes. Tenanted, excellent potential and under-capitalised. The CV was $950,000.

Sellers' motivation: This investment home was surplus to requirements. Sara & Brian had recently decided to stay living in the Bays to pursue their dream of buying a holiday home on Waiheke Island; instead of moving their family to Remuera.

How they decided on me: They had bought and sold a few times and had always dealt with Barfoot & Thompson. They asked their preferred Bays agent to recommend a Remuera specialist. That agent referred them to me.

Selling Method: The property was an obvious auction candidate due to its location and potential to improve without over-capitalising. I envisaged no less than 3 bidders at a tightly controlled auction. In the end, I was right.

Marketing: Advertising appeared weekly in the Property Press (full & half page colour advertisements) and the NZ Herald (quarter pages). We erected a photo signboard on the front fence. We featured on www.barfoot.co.nz , www.trademe.co.nz and www.realestate.co.nz. Paid feature upgrades generated a five fold increase in the number of web enquiries . Colour glossy A4 size brochures were distributed and displayed prominently in the B&T Remuera branch office & window.

Results: My comparative market analysis (CMA) indicated that similar homes had sold recently in the $1m to $1.25m bracket. I couldn't find any similar homes that had sold higher. Just before I was awarded the listing Sara almost backed out in order to investigate other agent's price opinions. Her expectations were around $1.3mil and once I gave her my CMA she felt my price estimate might lead to a disappointing result. I convinced her to trust my skills and the property sold under the hammer for $1,302,000 with 3 bidders and Sara and Brian were delighted.

Main Success Factors: Sara and Brian understood that if it was possible to achieve their price expectations they had to trust that a real estate salesperson with 14+ years experience could achieve it. Notwithstanding my "low" CMA based on actual sales data, I achieved a better result than 99% of buyers and agents had predicted. The general consensus was "gosh that was a high price".

Postscript: A year after this sale the new owner sold through an agency with a relatively small network of about 50 supporting agents. Surprisingly it sold for only $1,155,000 - quite a discount in what was generally considered a good market! To me this unfortunate result validated that my original CMA of $1m to $1.25 was correct, but that Sara & Brian won by choosing - a) a professional agent and experienced marketer; b) an agent that is part of much bigger network of effective agents, and c) auction with bold marketing versus ‘by negotiation’ with minimal marketing.