A cash offer within 30 minutes: How this investor found high-intent buyers in an instant, breaking the area sale record

When sales manager Dillon Adams decided to sell his Varsity Lakes investment property to capitalise on the booming Gold Coast property market and free up funds for a home renovation, he didn’t know much about the best method of marketing.

What he did know was that friends and family had “sold well” and that there was strong demand for family homes in his neighbourhood, with very few listings to choose from.

He engaged Ben Williams from RE/MAX Regency to sell the four-bedroom home in Yawl Place, relying on his expertise to nail the marketing.

Williams opted to kick-start the campaign using Domain’s off-market alerts. 

Traditionally off-market properties are not publicly listed on portals like Domain. Instead, a seller decides to sell the property via their agent’s database. There are numerous reasons why a seller would want to proceed this way, including the need to be discreet or the desire to sell quickly. 

Domain’s off-market property alerts match properties with buyers who are actively searching in a given area, before the properties are listed. These high-intent buyers sign up to be notified of off-market properties, getting ahead of the competition before the properties go to market.

Williams’ approach paid quick dividends: he received a cash offer within 30 minutes of triggering the off-market alert.

“I’ve had a lot of success with [off-market] previously,” he says. “We get inundated every time we use it; it’s an indispensable tool. Within 30 seconds our email blows up with buyer inquiry.”

Williams says off-market property alerts are well-suited to properties in high demand where frustrated buyers are keen to get ahead of the pack by being first through the door – having time to do their due diligence before a property hits the market.

“Buyers feel like they’re getting first dibs, even if it still goes to market,” he says.

In the case of Adams’ property, the Sydney buyer was stuck in lockdown but Williams was able to give him a virtual inspection while more than 50 people attended the one and only open home inspection.

“He was first to put an offer in,” Williams says, adding that this puts buyers “in a much stronger position than if they just turned up at the open and tried to buy it”.

“It’s a win for the buyer and a win for the seller,” he says, “especially with the huge shortage of family homes in the southern part of the Gold Coast.”

While there were multiple offers on the renovated residence, the Sydney buyer remained the front runner, and Williams went on to negotiate a sale price of $1.1 million – a record price for east Varsity Lakes.

Adams says he had tenants in the Yawl Place property and only wanted to sell if he got the right price. Listing off-market was a great way to give him a feel for the market and to test his price point.

A nearby waterfront had sold for close to $1.3 million so as his property was only one block back from the lake, he thought a seven-figure price tag was not out of reach.

“I knew homes on the water sell for $100,000 to $200,000 more, and ours was a bigger block with a similar-sized house, so that was my logic to get to $1.1 million,” Adams says.

Originally bought as the family home with wife Anna and their two children, Adams opted to move closer to the beach, where the former chippie is now tackling a substantial renovation.

He has a second investment property and says he would definitely consider using the same marketing strategy if market conditions were similar.

For Williams, off-market alerts provide a terrific avenue for flushing out highly motivated buyers at the outset of a sales campaign.

“I knew this type of property would be extremely popular with buyers that had registered with Domain,” Williams says. “Buyers are looking for family homes, large blocks, four bedrooms: all the stars aligned with this house. Doing off-market first worked a dream for our vendor.”

Interested in off-market properties? Sign up to hear about off-market properties that match your search before they’re listed.