People visiting malls, attracted by the display of goods, either try to buy them or enquire about the goods. The site office of a realty project also plays a crucial role and acts as a powerful marketing tool. Whatever is the nature of the project – luxury or affordable, the site office is essential for boosting the sales. In India, model flats are displayed to promote sales.
Earlier, the sales office was set up to demonstrate the experience of builders and the offers of the project. Gradually, the affordable housing projects too picked up the concept. Later, the site or sales office was designed to accommodate more and more customers. Sales office or site office or sales gallery is an integral and crucial part of the real estate transactions. If the sales office is not attractive, the sales will also diminish. It displays the best features and benefits of the project. Conducting walk-ins and site visits is the specialty of the sales office.
Role in marketing
The sales office plays a significant role in property marketing. The buyers get a good opinion about the project only on their visit to the site office. The marketing team with the help of the site office makes the buyers experience the facilities virtually pending construction of the project. They visualize the amenities that are on offer.
The site office should be long-term oriented and effective besides being creative as several customers visit the office many times. The realty projects take at least two or three years to complete. The sales office will function till the sale of 90 per cent of the properties on the inventory, according to Anarock Group Strategy Head Sunil Misra.
Sales office converts to club house
The maintenance of the good sales office is put at 0.5 per cent of the total cost of the project. Many developers prefer to have a permanent sales office rather than having an ad hoc sales office. In fact, it is a good decision. Once the project is through, they convert it into a club house and hand it over to the housing society. The site office construction and maintenance costs come down drastically. The plinth area of the sales office ranges between 1200 to 5000 sft. However, in some townships the plinth area ranges between 8000 and 10,000 sft.
The sales office will be continued till the construction of the project and sales are through. It acts as a bridge between the realtors and buyers. It plays a crucial role in clearing doubts of customers and demonstrates the features of the project. Price fixation and other transactions are carried out from here.
It acts not only as a point of sale from developers’ perspective, but also helps launch new projects and makes 80-85 per cent of the customers feel their property physically. A good sales office helps increase site visits of customers due to mouth-to-mouth publicity. It helps increase the sale of property by 4-5 per cent. The site is a good source of publicity to the developers’ brand. Grade-A and Grade-B developers tend to improve the sales by 50 per cent with the help of sales offices.
Examples of good site offices
The sales offices of Joyville of the housing projects being built in Thane by the prestigious Shapoorji Pallonji group and Northern Lights of the same group are highly attractive. The sales offices of Park West in Bangalore and Capital Heights in Nagpur and Tritvam in Kochi are described as the best.
Among luxury and ultra luxury housing projects, the Mumbai-based Imperial project and Imperial Avenue in Dubai, Lodha Group, DLF in Delhi NCR project, Sumitomo, Embassy in Bangalore, Sobha sales offices are very effective.
