In the previous post we have talked about the general ideas of communication with the foreign buyers, now here are some specific situations for your attention.
Your task is much easier if the potential foreign buyers speak the same language as you (for example, in case of the English-speaking Canadians buying real estate in the U.S., while the primarily French-speaking or even quite bilingual Canadians from the province of Quebec are a different story though).
In such circumstances you only have to take care of the issue that your property shows high on the other country’s internet (more on this later), and maybe you should learn about some not very significant cultural differences of your targeted foreign buyers, if any.
In general, the common mistake that business folks from the English-speaking countries make is sticking to the following misconception: As many people in the world do speak some broken English, it is easy to think that they do understand everything in the correct and clear way what was said or written to them in the proper English, and thus there is no need in translation and interpreting. Wrong! And can cost you the lost business which is a lot more than the price of translating and interpreting by the end of the day.
Just an example. An American partner emails to a “broken-English-knowledgeable” Russian partner in English: “The paperwork to close the deal is due before 08.09.15” and sits still quite happy with the deal going in the right direction. For him it means “by August the 9th”. The Russian of course understands it as “by the 8th of September” and goes on vacation for the month of August, equally happy.
What has happened here? The Americans are used to write the dates as month/day/year and do not care what the rest of the world thinks, while the Russians use the date format as day/month/year and equally do not care about the rest of the world. And there was nobody between them to fix the misunderstanding. The deal is broken, the trust is broken, and everybody is offended, no happy end at all.
A summary: Make your real estate marketing and selling comfortable for the foreign buyers by delivering them all the required information in their languages.
Happy blog reading,
Olga Kellen,
The Amazon Author
International Marketing Consultant and English-Russian Translator
Olga Kellen,
The Amazon Author
International Marketing Consultant and English-Russian Translator
Copyright © 2016 by Olga Kellen
All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved
Secrets of Selling Real Estate to Foreign Buyers 