Sellers are leaning on vendor advocates to boost their sale price and eliminate stress

What was once a niche service reserved largely for prestige property sellers is fast becoming mainstream, with Australians across all price points increasingly engaging vendor advocates to help achieve stronger sale prices.

Just as a buyer’s agent works exclusively for a purchaser and seeks to reduce the price, a vendor advocate is an independent professional engaged by the seller to maximise their return.

A vendor advocate is best engaged the moment a seller decides to put a property on the market.

They can advise on timing and presentation, help appoint agents.  oversee marketing campaigns, assist with negotiations and remain a point of contact right through to settlement.

“We’re like a real estate doula,” Fahey Younger, director of YoungerHill, says.

A licensed real estate agent herself, Younger works as both a buyer’s agent and a vendor advocate and has noticed an “exponential” growth in sellers seeking this tailored assistance.

“Since we started seven years ago, the ratio has always been 80 per cent buyers, 20 per cent vendors, and this year it’s been 80 per cent for vendors,” she says.

Clients range from those with $400,000 apartments to $4 million family homes.

“It’s across the board, there’s not a deal that I’ve done where we haven’t been able to add value,” Younger says.

“It’s about being really strategic about where you spend and having someone oversee the whole process.”

Justine Milankovic is an experienced property investor, having bought her first property aged 19.

Five years ago, she engaged a vendor advocate for the first time and found them so useful, she’s now sold three properties this way.

“The advice definitely made a big increase on the sales price, and being able to hand all the stress over to someone who has that expertise was a relief,” Milankovic says.

Working with Sam Davenport from Prop Culture, Milankovic sold an investment property in Bonbeach, her primary residence in Caulfield, and 2/61 Tudor St, Bentleigh East, which she had bought specifically to flip.

Davenport was involved in the buying process for the Bentleigh East property, a single-storey house at the rear of the block.

“She came through, had a look, gave us her opinion.”

Milankovic and her builder husband then extensively renovated, extending up and adding a third bedroom to the floor plan.

Throughout the build, they continued to seek Davenport’s expertise, with each question effectively asking “what can maximise our money?”

Domain data shows the purchase price was $700,000, and the property sold at auction a year later for $1.624 million.

Prior to putting Milankovic’s Caulfield home on the market, Davenport advised her to paint, carpet and renovate the kitchen.

Those refurbishments cost $25,000, and not only did she recoup that cost.

“It added another $100,000 to the sale price,” Milankovic says.

It’s not just investors using vendor advocates.

Vendor advocate Simone Curley from Trusted Advocacy and Property Consultants says clients can be first-timers, downsizers, people who have inherited property, time-poor vendors and those wanting someone to “hold their hand” through what is often the largest financial transaction most people will make.

Real estate agent Lachlan Castran, who works at the top end of the market, says “immensely private” high-net-worth individuals often use a vendor advocate to add an element of anonymity to proceedings.

Curley says their role in the process can also benefit real estate agents.

She advised vendors at 47 Oswin Street, Kew East, to make some updates and arranged styling, which led the agent to revise the quote by $100,000.

Quoting $2.15 million to $2.35 million, they received an offer of $2.38 million, followed by four additional offers, which triggered a boardroom auction resulting in a sale for $2.61 million.

“The agent said ‘you just made it so easy for me’. He just looked after the buyers and I looked after everything else,” she says.