Real estate letters
Appraisal invitation letter examples
An appraisal letter asks for more than any other letter an agent sends: time inside somebody’s house. The way to earn it is to make the appraisal sound like information rather than a sales appointment, and to be explicit that it does not commit them to anything.
Written by Autopen Australia · Updated
Cold, to an owner you have never met
Hello,
Most people ask for an appraisal when they have already decided to sell, which is about a year later than it is useful.
If you would like to know what [ADDRESS] is worth now, it takes about twenty minutes, I will walk through the comparable sales with you, and you will have the figure in writing the same day. There is no listing presentation attached to it and I will not ring you afterwards unless you ask me to.
[AGENT NAME], [MOBILE]
Following an appraisal that went quiet
Six to twelve months after the original. The letter has to acknowledge the gap without making it awkward.
[FIRST NAME],
I appraised [ADDRESS] in [MONTH YEAR]. You were not in a hurry then and I have not chased you, which I hope was the right call.
The market has moved since, and the figure I gave you is now out of date in a way that is worth knowing about. Happy to update it in writing without coming out again if that is easier.
[AGENT NAME], [MOBILE]
Where there is a recent sale to anchor it
Hello,
[ADDRESS] on your street sold for [PRICE] this month.
That figure will have changed what your own place is worth, and probably by more than you would guess. If you would like me to put a number on it, it is twenty minutes and you get it in writing. No obligation and no follow-up calls.
[AGENT NAME], [MOBILE]
Getting it right
- What to mention. What the appraisal actually involves, how long it takes, and what they get at the end of it. Owners decline because they imagine a two-hour listing presentation, so say that it is twenty minutes.
- What to leave out. "Free market appraisal" as a headline. It is a phrase every agent uses and it reads as a hook rather than an offer. Describe the thing instead of naming the offer.
- How long. 70 to 110 words. This letter is allowed to be slightly longer because it has to pre-empt an objection.
- How personal. Low pressure to the point of being almost reluctant. Any urgency here reads as commission.
Personalising more than a handful
The fields that earn their place here: [ADDRESS], [STREET], [PRICE], [MONTH YEAR], [FIRST NAME].
Merging the owner’s own address into a cold letter is more confronting than agents expect. On a cold run, merge the street and leave the house number out; on a warm run to somebody you have met, the full address is fine.
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
Appraisal letters work on repetition rather than on any single drop, which means a schedule rather than a campaign, and that is exactly the kind of thing that quietly stops happening when it depends on someone finding an evening.
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, hand-addresses the envelopes and lodges the run with Australia Post, or sends it back to you to release in waves.
Want this running every quarter without you doing it? Ask about a standing run
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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.