For over 20 years Reyn Bowman has been the leader of the Durham Convention and Visitors Bureau and nobody has spent more energy urging the citizens of Durham to shed our sheepishness and confront those from neighboring communities who badmouth living in Durham. Lots of stuff is coming on line to brag about but some things have been around a long time. One of those is the annual American Dance Festival. If you follow this link to the ADF home page there is an incredible slide show of photographs by Sara D. Davis.

Reyn covers this topic in a recent post on his blog. It’s worth peeking at. In fact, it’s worth subscribing to Reyn’s blog by adding it to a “feed reader” on your computer. The one I use is free from Google and lets me keep track of a number of blogs that relate to Durham and real estate marketing. His post also includes a link to an article from the New York Times on this years festival.

If you can’t find enough positive information about Durham here on the Durham Luxury Real Estate blog, you can always find more on Reyn’s Bull City Mutterings.

I feel a little guilty here. It’s been two weeks since I’ve posted anything even though there are plenty of great things happening in Durham that enhance our ability to market luxury homes . Being on vacation would be a decent excuse but the truth is I’ve been working harder then ever mostly on a consulting gig to re-launch what was already to best home search tool available anywhere…and it is being developed right here in our hometown of Durham, North Carolina by BestHomePro. The older version is what is on the search page of this site. Even this older version is the most comprehensive tool available but it takes some playing around with to really understand and take advantage of. Besides allowing you to search on over 60 features (most search tools typically allow a number in the low teens) the new version was specifically designed for ease of use and speed. Adjusting the search area on the map or changing one of the other search parameters automatically changes the results. The mapping capability also lets you see where important community features like schools, medical facilities and shopping are located relative to the search results.

For an agent or blogger like myself that is focused geographically, BestHomePro allows the creation of pre-set “search strings.” For example, on a page that describes the Hope Valley Neighborhood, I can put a link that pulls up a search focused on the area around the country club. I plan to add these as soon as the new version is ready for prime time which should be within the next two weeks.

If you would like to take a peek at the prototype system you can click the link. It is still a little “buggy” and may not allow you to save searches but you can see the improvements. If you want to use the old system, all the features are available and any saved searches will still be available after the conversion the new version.

The lead editorial today in the Durham Herald-Sun is headlined “Durham’s message is getting around.” It sites a poll that seems to confirm that the residents of Wake and Orange counties increasingly have a favorable view of Durham. It cites the efforts of the Convention and Visitors Bureau, The Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Durham, Inc. for doing a better job of telling Durham’s story.

One can agree with everything the editorial states but still have mixed feelings about it’s appearance at this point in the game. Why now? The editorial writers didn’t just notice the dramatic developments or the impact they would have on our neighbors to the east and west.

Of more concern, however, is why more Realtors, especially in the luxury market segment where homes need wide exposure, aren’t actively promoting Durham and her neighborhoods more aggressively around the Triangle. The copy I see on “e-flyers” and on Realtor.com is still focused on the bricks and mortar and ignores half the experience of owning a home in the Durham Community. Amenities like the DBAP sell the community. Many people risked their reputations and political careers to push the DBAP and now the Performing Arts Center. It could be that we’ve been defensive for so long that we’ve forgotten how to be proud of our community. How often do we encounter phrases in copy like “prominent Durham address” or “in the heart of historic Hope Valley.” This is not false pride. This is not spin. This is not hype.  This is the duty we owe to our clients to show their homes in the best possible light.

The Durham Luxury Home Report for 2008, discusses in more detail specifically how to use the Durham’s growing list of amenities to promote luxury home sales. This is available in a pdf format and does not require that you register or provide any information.

As we pass Memorial Day, the Summer solstice and Independence Day, the dog days of summer are upon us. We’ve also had more consecutive days with rain than many of us can remember. But even if drought fears have receded a bit, sales of luxury homes in Durham have been sparse and July and August are not typically strong months even in the best of times.

Last year in the second quarter 15 homes in the $700,000+ category where sold in Durham. This year it was 7 and the dollar volume was down 49% from $14.7M to $7.5M. Since there were 11 sales in the first quarter, the year-to-date comparisons are not so dramatic; 21 sales in 2007 compared with 18 this year and dollar volumn down just 18.8%.

Both Orange and Wake Counties saw significant drops in the sales of luxury homes in the same pattern. There are two differences, however, between Durham and the other two markets. The first is that Durham listings in this luxury category represent only 8.4% of the homes while it has over 17% of the total listings in the three counties. Second, it had only 4% of the sales in this category in the second quarter. With 86 homes on the market there is enough inventory to satisfy the demand for more than the next two and a half years.

These statistics shouldn’t surprise anyone in the real estate community that has been following the luxury market in Durham for the last several years. What does surprise me is that there doesn’t seem to be any change in the marketing practices employed by the listing agents that are active in this segment in Durham. Durham is undergoing a revival led by events downtown many of which have been mentioned in posts on this site. The quality of the luxury housing stock as well as convenience to shopping, entertainment and the major employment centers, in most cases is as good or better than anything in Wake or Orange counties. The difference is that Durham is dealing with an out-of-date image that holds back sales. Sooner or later that image will catch up with the facts on the ground and the market will improve. Listing agents that market the entire experience of living in Durham and not just the bricks and mortar of their listings will be the first to benefit and help move the whole market forward.

From a marketing perspective the long term solution is to do a better job of promoting Durham and its unique and growing list of assets. The Newcomer’s Guide to Buying Luxury Real Estate in Durham available through the link in the sidebar is my attempt to provide one arrow in the quiver necessary for this effort. It may be a little too personal to plagiarize verbatim but I hope every agent who lists in this market creates something similar or an improvement upon it and distributes it widely.

However, market share and long term strategies to promote Durham’s renaissance are irrelevant to the family with a home currently on the market. There are strategies that are not widely applied today that break with tradition as well as employ new technology to better position and promote a listing. The other report available on the sidebar, The Durham Luxury Home Report 2008, describes some of the details about how to do this. Both reports are offered with no obligation.