Real estate letters
Just sold letter examples
A just sold letter is not an announcement, it is a question dressed as one. The neighbours already know the house sold. What they do not know is what it went for, whether that is more than they expected, and what it implies for their own place. Lead with the number or do not send the letter.
Written by Autopen Australia · Updated
With a price you can publish
Hello,
[ADDRESS] sold on [DATE] for [PRICE], above the range we quoted at the first open home.
What moved it was the number of buyers who had been waiting for something on [STREET] specifically rather than in [SUBURB] generally. There are more of them than the suburb data suggests.
If you want to know what that means for your place, I am happy to tell you without turning it into an appraisal.
[AGENT NAME], [MOBILE]
Where the price is not public yet
Hello,
[ADDRESS] is under contract. I cannot publish the figure until it settles, but I can tell you it was above what the owners expected and that there were [NUMBER] registered bidders.
If you would like the number when it becomes public, reply to this and I will send it to you rather than you having to look for it.
[AGENT NAME], [MOBILE]
When the buyer missed out and is still looking
The most useful just sold letter of all, and it is only honest if it is true.
Hello,
We sold [ADDRESS] last week. Two of the buyers who missed out are still looking on [STREET] and have asked me to let them know if anything comes up.
If selling has crossed your mind in the next year, it is worth a conversation before it is a decision. No appraisal and no obligation.
[AGENT NAME], [MOBILE]
Getting it right
- What to mention. The street, the result in plain terms, and one sentence on what made the difference. If the price is public, print it; if it is not, say what you can say and do not be coy about why.
- What to leave out. A photograph of yourself holding a sold sticker, the words "another one", and any implication that the neighbours should be impressed. The letter is about their house, not your quarter.
- How long. 50 to 90 words. The number is doing the work.
- How personal. Neutral and factual beats triumphant. The owner reading it is doing arithmetic, not celebrating with you.
- When not to send one. When the result was poor, or when the vendor would be uncomfortable seeing their sale used as marketing. Ask them first; most say yes, and the ones who say no would have been upset.
Personalising more than a handful
The fields that earn their place here: [ADDRESS], [STREET], [SUBURB], [PRICE], [DATE], [NUMBER].
The price field is the one that must never be wrong. A just sold letter quoting a figure the neighbours can check against the public record and find incorrect destroys the credibility of every letter you send that street afterwards.
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
A just sold drop is time-critical: it works in the fortnight after the result and stops working after that. Two hundred letters written by hand in that window is not realistic alongside listing and selling.
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.
Need a drop out before the result goes cold? Get a price
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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.