How this Sydney family's unconventional home-selling strategy paid off

Rob Cascio has a sales strategy that flies in the face of convention. Instead of relying on a local agent who potentially knows his neighbourhood inside-out, he prefers to use an out-of-area agent.

Cascio reasons that if out-of-area buyers are known to spend more when buying property, why not engage an out-of-area agent with a database packed with these buyers?

“I’ve always said it’s much better to go with an agent out of area because you’ll be dealing with people who can spend that little bit more,” he says.

He believes this strategy helped to secure a good result for the sale of his Kellyville Ridge home just after the NSW coronavirus restrictions sent jitters through the market.

Cascio interviewed a number of agents and says the in-area agents didn’t have faith in the price he wanted to achieve. In contrast, the out-of-area agents “showed me people on a database ready to go and the confidence was there”.

Rob and wife Jo-Anne have four children and decided to trade their 11-year-old Eden Brae home for a much larger block where they will build a new house.

SOLD - $1,380,000

17 Candilla Street, Kellyville Ridge NSW 2155

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“We were very happy there, the only reason for the move was to get more land and build a pool and a shed,” Cascio says.

In February they engaged Sunny Gandhi from The Agency Castle Hill with the aim of selling for between $1.35 million and $1.42 million.

“One thing I liked about Sunny was that he wasn’t pushy,” Cascio says. “I told him what I wanted and I told him I’m not going to give the property away. Everyone’s house is their haven. We just seemed to interact well with one another, I liked the way he was going to go about his campaign.”

The Cascios are very house-proud so there was little they needed to do to prepare their home for sale. A stylist worked some magic in their dining and media rooms and they knocked over a handful of small maintenance jobs.

They agreed to an auction campaign because there were no homes sold in the six months prior that matched their home’s size and floor plan, making it difficult for Gandhi to lock down a firm value.

The five-bedroom property was likely to be a good fit for a large or extended family and there was good interest in the opening weeks with up to 70 people turning out for each inspection.

“Not only did the home have the size, it had the lifestyle as well: a beautiful al fresco deck, pizza oven and level yard,” says Gandhi, who fielded offers over $1.4 million before auction.

Then the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic started to bite and buyers got nervous.

“We had a fantastic campaign and then two days before the auction, the media was absolutely hammering about COVID,” says Cascio.

Come auction day, some buyers decided the market was ripe for a bargain. Three registered bidders turned up but the bids didn’t reach the reserve price.

“The auctioneer said to us you’ve got the wrong people on the merry-go-round,” says Cascio, who was understandably disappointed when his property was passed in at $1.33 million. But he was also confident one of the bidders would eventually step up and buy post-auction.

“There was only a handful of two-storey properties on the market and that gave us the upper hand as well,” Cascio says.

“Over the next couple of days, a lot of these guys who low-balled it were messaging Sunny straight away wanting to do a deal. That’s when a lot of the motion was happening. Sunny did his work getting them to bounce off one another, that was the exciting part.”

A young family of four eventually signed a contract for $1.38 million two weeks after the auction.

Both Gandhi and Cascio believe the price would have been higher pre-pandemic.

“To be honest I think we would have smashed it out of the park if it wasn’t for COVID,” says Cascio.

“When social distancing started to come through, there just wasn’t the turnout for the auction. The auctioneer said over the previous weeks [properties] were going for $100,000 to $150,000 over reserve. I think we were shy by about a week!”

That said, Cascio says he’s glad he didn’t list any later as restrictions increased and buyers had more concerns around job security. He’s also in negotiations for his new block of land and expects to buy it at a significant discount to pre-COVID-19 crisis prices.

“There’s a lot of sub-divisions and not too many people wanting the larger blocks,” he says.

This was the second time Cascio had sold a family home and having traded investment properties in the past, he said it was definitely a more emotional journey.

“We brought our kids up there … the family home has lots of memories and the emotional side of it didn’t really hit us until the sold sign went up,” he says. “But I still think with everything that’s happening both Jo-Anne and myself are very happy.”

This is part of a series looking at how Australians sold their homes. For more advice, read Domain’s ultimate guide to selling your home.