Buying Or Selling Your Home Requires More than Good Luck...It Requires A Strategic Plan

Have you ever thought of the buying or selling of a property as a strategic process? Do you understand what is going to happen before you achieve your goal of satisfactorily selling your property or purchasing exactly the right home that satisfies both your needs and wants? Have you thought strategically at all or are you just going to try your luck and see what happens?

Strategic Thinking

Purchasing or selling a property is WAY too important an occurence to just rely on luck...You need to strategise in order to accomplish your goals and reach your desired outcomes!

Now, just exactly how do we do that?

Strategic thinking presupposes that you consider what you want to accomplish, why you need to accomplish this as well as how to and who is needed to accomplish these outcomes. The 'what' and 'why' are your personal preferences when it comes to buying or selling a property, but the 'how to' and 'who is needed' makes up your strategic plan. Thinking strategically about these two aspects ensures that you have a vision of the methodology in order to achieve your desired outcomes.

Your strategic plan in order to achieve these outcomes requires control over the process, i.e. what has to be done, by when and by whom as well as constant feedback and evaluation.

Strategic Thinking Skills

According to Ruth Mott in her book "Strategic Thinking and how do I get it?" she lists skills that are required for effective strategic thinking. Some pertinent to our needs are:

• Ability to see the big picture
• Ability to ask the right questions
• Ability to outline the necessary steps to achieve the goal
• Ability to develop strategic alliances and bring the right people together
• Ability to change direction

When one studies these necessary skills it is relatively easy to adapt them to make up our own strategic plan for buying or selling a property. It is also easy to see why such a plan is an absolute necessity when embarking on a goal as important as either of these...and in most cases, the one (a sale) leads to the other (a purchase), or a purchase can lead to a conditional sale.

Seeing the bigger picture and asking the right questions includes the 'why' do I need to buy/sell my property now and the 'what' I need to buy/sell. In order to answer the 'how to' and the 'who is needed' requires a well thought-out and meticulously prepared strategic plan.

The ability to change direction is also a critical requirement, as it may become clear during the execution of your plan that something that you thought was going to cause the plan to succeed is in actual fact frustrating the process, you need the necessary flexibility to change direction...and fast.

Outlining the necessary steps to achieve your goal, developing strategic alliances by bringing the right people together are the next steps to your strategic selling or purchasing plan.

Your Strategic Selling/Buying Plan

None of us can predict the future, but we can plan for it as best we can.

1. Start by writing down the goals/outcomes (the bigger picture) that you need to achieve by asking the right questions:

• Why are we selling/buying?
• By when do I need to give/take transfer?
• What am I prepared to sell for (remember a property only has one price...the amount a willing, able and informed buyer is prepared to pay a serious seller) or how much can I afford to pay for the correct property (things like an available deposit, bond amount you qualify for, Transfer Duty and other purchase costs to be considered)?
• What are my family's needs and wants in respect of a sale/purchase?

2. Outline the steps that need to take place in order to achieve your goal - meaning that you need to make a list of the strategic thinking skills in order to create your strategic plan:

• Develop strategic alliances with companies and or people that you need to participate in the process to achieve your goal, like trustworthy estate agencies that operate in the area, your attorney, bank, mortgage originators if purchasing and compliance professionals if selling etc. In other words, you have to line up the right people that you are comfortable with. These must be the kind of companies/people that are competent and that you can trust to assist you in achieving this extremely important outcome.
• Change direction if necessary in the event that some part of your plan does not meet your expectations.

Start at the end and work back

• Begin at the end, that is, state your end goal, e.g. selling my house in 6 months for at least R.....
• Work backwards and write down the outcomes in order to create a timeline
• List the tasks/expected progress in order to ensure your end goal
• Identify the people that need to perform at each stage to accomplish the eventual outcome
• Establish how and when you will be informed/updated by means of feedback in order to track progress
• Change direction if necessary

Now you can become part of the solution towards selling your property at the right price or purchasing exactly what you need and want!

Don't rely on luck...make a plan...devise a strategy!

Pam Snyman CPRE (NQF Level 7)
(MPhil, Dip Advanced Property Practice, Dip Property Investment & Valuation)

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