Real estate letters
Purchase anniversary letters
The buyer you settled three years ago is a vendor in about four more, and almost nobody writes to them in between. An anniversary letter is the cheapest way to still be the agent they think of, and it only works if it asks for nothing at all.
Written by Autopen Australia · Updated
The first anniversary
[FIRST NAME],
A year today since you picked up the keys to [ADDRESS]. I hope the first year has been a good one and that the [FEATURE] turned out to be as useful as you hoped.
Nothing needed from you. If you ever want to know what the street is doing, ring me and I will tell you without turning it into anything.
[AGENT NAME], [MOBILE]
Later anniversaries, with the number attached
From about year three the figure becomes interesting, and it is the reason the letter gets kept.
[FIRST NAME],
[NUMBER] years in [ADDRESS] this month.
Since you bought, [NUMBER SOLD] homes on [STREET] have sold, the most recent at [PRICE]. That is the useful number rather than the suburb median, which is dragged around by the units.
No agenda attached to this. Just thought you would want to know.
[AGENT NAME], [MOBILE]
Where the owner has clearly been renovating
[FIRST NAME],
Drove past [ADDRESS] last week. The [WORK] looks terrific and it has made more difference to the front of the house than I would have guessed.
[NUMBER] years since you bought it. Nothing needed, just good to see.
[AGENT NAME], [MOBILE]
Getting it right
- What to mention. The date, the house, and one piece of genuinely useful information about what has happened to values on that street since. The information is the gift; the relationship is the point.
- What to leave out. An appraisal offer. The entire value of this letter is that it is the one piece of agent mail that does not want something, and attaching an ask converts it into the farming letter they already ignore.
- How long. 50 to 90 words.
- How personal. Friendly and brief. You are a person they liked once, writing to say hello with something useful attached.
- When not to send one. Where the purchase went badly or the relationship soured. An anniversary note about a transaction somebody regrets is a reminder rather than a courtesy.
Personalising more than a handful
The fields that earn their place here: [FIRST NAME], [ADDRESS], [STREET], [NUMBER], [PRICE], [NUMBER SOLD].
Settlement dates are the one field an agency usually has exactly right, and the anniversary is worthless if it is wrong. The harder field is occupancy: a letter congratulating somebody on five years in a house they sold two years ago reaches the new owner and tells them the agency has not looked at its own records since.
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
Anniversaries arrive a handful a week, every week, forever. That is the cadence no agency sustains by hand, and it is the one where a standing monthly batch costs very little and compounds for years.
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.
Have years of past buyers and no system for staying in touch? Standing monthly batches
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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.