Real estate letters
Letters after settlement
The letters after settlement are the cheapest business an agent will ever write and the ones most reliably skipped. A vendor who has just had a good result is at the single most referral-willing moment of their life, and a buyer who has just moved in is a vendor in about seven years. Neither letter should ask for anything.
Written by Autopen Australia · Updated
To the vendor, after settlement
[FIRST NAME],
Settled. Thank you for trusting us with [ADDRESS], and for being straightforward through a campaign that had a couple of awkward weeks in the middle.
I hope the next place is everything you wanted. If you ever need anything local, you have my number.
[AGENT NAME]
[FIRST NAME] and [PARTNER NAME],
[ADDRESS] has settled. [RESULT] was a better outcome than the range we started with, and most of that was the decision you made about [DETAIL].
Thank you for a good campaign. Genuinely enjoyed it.
[AGENT NAME]
To the buyer, after they move in
Send it a fortnight after the keys, not on the day. On the day they are surrounded by boxes and will not read it.
[FIRST NAME],
Hope the move went smoothly and that the first week in [ADDRESS] has been kind to you.
For what it is worth: the bakery at the [STREET] end is the good one, and the bins go out Tuesday. If you need a tradesperson for anything, ring me before you search for one. I know who turns up.
[AGENT NAME], [MOBILE]
Asking for the referral, later and separately
A fortnight to a month after the thank-you note, and only to vendors whose campaign genuinely went well.
[FIRST NAME],
Hope the new place is settling in.
One ask, and only one. Most of my work comes from people who have been through a campaign and mention it to somebody. If [SUBURB] comes up in conversation and someone is thinking about selling, I would be grateful if you pointed them at me.
No need to reply to this.
[AGENT NAME]
Getting it right
- What to mention. For a vendor: the result, one honest thing about the campaign, and nothing else. For a buyer: the house, something specific about the street, and an offer of local information rather than property services.
- What to leave out. A request for a review in the same note as the thanks. Ask separately, a fortnight later, or not at all. A note that thanks and asks in the same breath is read as the ask.
- How long. 40 to 70 words. These are notes, not letters.
- How personal. Warm and plainly written. These two people have just spent months dealing with you and will notice anything that sounds like a form.
Personalising more than a handful
The fields that earn their place here: [FIRST NAME], [PARTNER NAME], [ADDRESS], [STREET], [SUBURB], [RESULT].
The partner-name field is the one that goes wrong. Where a property was in one name but two people attended every inspection, a note addressed to one of them is worse than a note addressed to neither. Check the field is populated for both before merging it, and fall back to the address where it is not.
Before any run, read the piece with the longest value in your data, the shortest, and the empty one. If all three read as English the merge is sound. Personalising direct mail at scale covers the rest.
Sending these at volume
An agency doing forty settlements a year has eighty of these to write, arriving two or three at a time across every week of the year. That cadence is why they stop.
Autopen Australia writes each piece individually with a real ballpoint, personalises every piece from your list, written into the sentence rather than dropped into a gap and hand-addresses the envelopes.
Want these going out on every settlement without being chased? Set up a standing batch
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Writing more of these than you have evenings
Tell us roughly how many and what they say. We will come back with an exact price and a production window.