Knox Family Real Estate

Georgina has sold a number of properties in the past 17 years, so she knows too well how difficult and stressful the whole process can be. Until she met Ning of Knox Family Real Estate in Gordon, Georgina never thought that she could sell a property without going through the dreadful open house and public auction. Ning impressed Georgina with a simpler way of selling and saved her over $10,000 in up front marketing costs. In the end, Georgina was so pleased with the final selling price of $4,900,000. Thank you, Georgina, for sharing your story, so that others can learn from your experience.

My name is Georgina. When we decided to put the house on the market, the first thing we did was go to an open house in our are and there were hoards of people running through the house, opening drawers, cupboards, kids jumping on beds. It looked like the agents had no control at all, and my husband and I walked out of there horrified.

We’ve sold many homes over the past 17 years, in this area alone. We’ve sold four properties. So, we do know a lot of the local agents. Some of them we are quite friendly with. In previous sales, we’d gone down the auction route every time. We know the process. The general trend is for an auction in this area, and we were dreading selling our house that way again. It is very stressful. I just didn’t want the two openings a week. I didn’t want all those people through my house. We’re very private people.

The marketing costs can be $10,000, $20,000, depending on what they want to do.

We are really busy and our household is quite chaotic, so we wanted a very simple process. We didn’t realise that you could sell properties without going to auction. We didn’t realise that an agent would let us do that.

We approached Knox because they offered us a different way of selling, which was more appealing to us. Ning qualified all the purchasers that came through, so they were all genuine buyers coming through our property, not tire-kickers. Ning made sure that each person that came to the house could afford the house, but was also interested in that style of property. She didn’t just bring people through to keep Andrew and me happy.

There were only a few inspections. I think there was only about eight in total, and of those eight, maybe it was the purchaser who came through a few times. So, it wasn’t intrusive at all. I think if people see the house on the internet, you do need the internet, and they like the look of it, they’ll come through. The genuine buyers will come through. So, you don’t need all that additional marketing material.

Compared to other sales in the area, we were very satisfied. The sale price was $4.9 million. I would definitely refer friends and family to Ning if they were thinking of putting a house on the market. Absolutely.

Grant sold his mother’s home for significantly more than he was expecting. Grant is very grateful to Peter Knox and his team at Knox Family Real Estate for achieving such a great sale price for his Mum’s home. It was a unique situation that required smart thinking from the Agent and that’s exactly what Peter provided.

We thank Grant for sharing his story, so that others can make the best choice when it comes time to selling their home.

Peter’s sale negotiation skills were very effective; Peter’s supportive and intelligent approach was a bonus.

Prior to taking on Knox Family Real Estate, we considered going to auction, Peter made the effort to clearly explain the benefits of his private treaty / negotiation approach. Peter’s approach definitely turned out to be the most effective.

The sale price was obviously important. However, Peter made the sale of Mum’s home a far less stressful experience by providing additional guidance and support, over and above just the property sale. Peter was genuinely interested and supportive about what Mum might do after the sale of her Roseville Home.

We saw Peter as our negotiator. He was more than a real estate agent. Peter had a calm, intelligent and non-aggressive approach to negotiating.  

There were points during the negotiation, where my brother, mother and I thought were not progressing, we felt sale discussions were about to fall through. Peter came up with intelligent and experienced strategies that opened up the sale negotiations. We could not have achieved the great end result without Peter and Knox Family Real Estate.

The sale of Mum’s Home was a stressful and emotional experience. We didn’t have the experience for a successful outcome. Peter had these skills. It was a significant moment during negotiations when Peter suggested correspondence was not being passed on to all directors of the aged care organisation. The fellow we were dealing with appeared to be applying stress to Mum by delaying communication. Mum was getting very stressed.  Negotiations appeared to be stalling. Peter said, “I believe what we need to do now is send all correspondence to all the directors in the organisation.” All of a sudden negotiations and communication progressed.

Peter approaches sale negotiations with professionalism and intelligence.

Peter achieved significantly more than I expected.  In market terms, what was initially offered was reasonable. However this had been our family home for many decades. Mum felt she was being pushed out of her home by the aged care home. What Peter achieved made my Mum, Brother and I very happy.

Peter’s experience and negotiation skills achieved close to 50% above what appeared to be market value.

Yes Peter was expensive. If you look at just cost on its own, yes you’d probably go elsewhere, however Peter more than covered his fee with a great outcome. Sometimes you’ve got to pay a little more to get a quality result.

At that time, the market appeared to go a little quiet. If we hadn’t used Peter, and instead gone to auction (with another Agent), we may have struggled to even achieve what the Buyer had initially offered.  Going to auction may have resulted in our achieving perhaps 50% less than what Peter achieved.

It was also interesting to note that the property immediately to the south of Mum’s home sold shortly before Mum’s. This property was significantly larger than Mum’s Home. Peter was able to negotiate a significantly higher selling price for Mum’s smaller property.

Even though we had unique circumstance for Mum’s Roseville Home that really lent itself to a private treaty sell. I would definitely choose Peter and Knox Family Real Estate for my next property sale.

I highly recommend Knox Family Real Estate and Peter Knox.

Pablo and his family had a lot of trouble trying to sell their family home. He felt the previous agent did not do the best job and as a result their property sat on the market for several months without selling. 12 months later they tried to sell their home again and this time they used Ning from Knox Family Real Estate to get the job done. Pablo was amazed at the differences between their poor first experience and their hugely successful second experience. Pablo attributes so much of their great price to Nings ability to qualify the right buyers and then negotiate the best price with those buyers. Thank you Pablo for sharing your story so that others can make the best choice to get the highest price for their home too.

Pablo had trouble selling his property with other agents. It was on the market for several months and wasted too much time and effort. He was prepared to accept less but when he met Ning from Knox Real Estate, he ended up selling his property in no time and got the price he wanted for his property. Overall, he described his experience as great and was happy of how things turned out. Thank you for sharing your story, this would truly inspire many sellers to not settle for less when it comes to selling process.

My name is Pablo and the property that we sold through Knox Family Real Estate was in East Lindfield and it was very difficult to sell in the beginning. We felt the previous agent didn’t do the best job. The property was on the market for several months. So when Ning came along and the people from Knox, we felt that their way of qualifying buyers really saved a lot of time and for us and for everybody involved, buyers included and we ended up selling it faster than what we thought and it was a great experience. And they were great, very professional and nice and it was a great experience overall.

Our beautiful property has a lot of stairs and a nice view but I doubted if it will get a good price. So when Ning came along with the team at Knox Family Real Estate in Gordon we felt that their way of qualifying buyers really hastened the process and in no time, the right people were meeting with us and it sold more quickly than we thought. We got a good price for the property and we are so happy that we did.

It happened because when Ning was qualifying the buyers, we really felt that she was going to find the right type of buyer that would appreciate the environment. There are lots of stairs, great view, it was amongst the bush, and very serene and peaceful. It is definitely not suited for elderly people or young couple with kids. But Ning kept this in mind and she was prepared to package it positively to interested clients.

Even though Ning’s percentage was slightly higher, we felt that because we got the price we wanted and we weren’t wasting time with people coming in, so many people coming in, we felt that overall not only did we save a lot of money but we saved a lot of time as well. And she’s worth it.

We’re advertising $1,600,000. We got what we wanted pretty much. My dad, the previous year, would have accepted $1,000,000. A year later to get another $600,000 was good.

I think Ning’s negotiation skills were excellent I think that’s why we got the price we ended up with and we were very happy.

The previous year we would have accepted $1,000,000, we wanted this time around, $1,600,000 and Ning sold it for $1,590,000.

We weren’t going to settle for any less and we felt we had to really to be part of the negotiation but she said, “Look, leave it up to me. I’ll get it sorted. Trust me.” We did trust her and we ended up getting a price we were very happy with.

My first impression of Ning was she was very polite, very academic, I don’t know if that’s the right word to say. I wasn’t apprehensive of using them but because we weren’t so happy with the previous agent we were a little bit sceptical. But at the end of the day her negotiation skills got the price we wanted.

Vilma could not sell her property even after having it on the market for 3 months with a different agency. She cancelled her agreement with the other agency but was still forced to pay $5,000 in advertising costs even though the property was not sold.  Vilma then met the team at Knox Family Real Estate in Gordon who offered a risk free way of selling. Vilma sold her house for $140,000 more than they were expecting. Thank you Vilma for sharing your story so others who are thinking about selling can learn from your experiences.

Vilma: We started up with another agency in the area and they listed it quite low.  That price is on the internet now, so if anyone looks up the property they see the low price. We had it on with that agent for about three months. Let’s face it; they didn’t sell it, did they? McConnell Bourn didn’t sell it. Then we just amicably terminated our agreement. We did have to pay money for advertising. We had to pay roughly $5,000.

That’s one of the things we liked about Knox; we didn’t pay anything up front. So if they didn’t sell it, or we had to pull out for whatever reason, we didn’t lose that money.

Reggie and Ning were certainly far more charismatic and very nice. They were very happy to come in and sit down and have a cup of tea, have a chit chat. They gave us plenty of time to prepare the house for when they brought in the prospective buyers. I didn’t like open house inspections with other agency because you have too many people in and you didn’t know who they were.

Whereas one-on-one is much nicer. Indeed, the negotiation with Ning and our buyer was fantastic and she really worked hard tirelessly to get a good price for us.

We were not happy to go to auction and Knox Real Estate did not go to auction, which we preferred. We really liked the way they do business. Peter Knox was a lovely man and honest man.

Just a couple of doors down, we spoke to the neighbours there because they’re selling and they asked us about Knox. We said how good they were and honest and they had signed up with Knox. Firstly, you don’t pay anything up front and obviously you pay fees at the end. You don’t have open house which I liked. They give you 24 hours, sometimes even longer notice to try and tidy up the bed and clear up stuff and get out of the house. Then they come and it’s just easier.

It didn’t matter if we’re Roseville and they came from Gordon, but then never once mentioned or hinted that it was an effort to come all the way from Gordon to Roseville. It was always done happily. You get what you pay for, so they gave us good service and we are happy to pay for it.

We sold the property in Roseville and got $140,000 more. Had we sold last year with the other agents and even with the lower price, we would not have had the house that we are buying now. We have found the property which we’ve always wanted.

We’ve just found the house of our dreams, actually, and we wouldn’t have had it had we sold last year. I don’t believe auction is the best way to go. I mean, I really do think, private treaty is much better.