Copywriting for Luxury Homes

May 25, 2009

Whatever else you think of the New York Times, the writing is great and the coverage topical. None more topical than a story in Sunday’s Times about a woman in New York who makes her living writing copy for real estate companies. Topical for me because I’m in the process of launching a new website [...]

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Durham on NYT OpEd Page

May 16, 2009

Bob Herbert is a columnist who is regularly seen on the opinion pages of the New York Times.  In today’s edition of the paper Mr. Herbert comments on an event that happened in Durham in 1944.  Strict racial segregation was the norm at the time, of course, but a white basketball team from the Duke [...]

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1st Qtr. Report on Durham Luxury Homes 2009

April 19, 2009

Increased Share for Durham in Luxury Market
For the second quarter in a row we observe the odd phenomena of Durham increasing it’s market share of luxury homes sold in the four county area of the Triangle area that I look at that includes Durham, Wake, Orange and Chatham counties. This happened without a significant increase [...]

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Anniversary Coming

April 4, 2009

Next Tuesday will mark the anniversary of the first post published on this blog. It was entitled “The Fox”  and was meant to set the stage for future discussions about how far Durham has come since I saw a fox running down Chapel Hill Street near the post office in Downtown Durham in 1985. To [...]

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More from Reyn

March 26, 2009

In the pantheon of Durham bloggers, Reyn Bowman of the Durham Convention and Visitors Bureau is beginning to take his rightful place, primarily using this new media to extend the role of the DCVB as Durham’s marketing agency. But as his profile points out, this is his personal blog  so it also has posts about [...]

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Durham Video

February 24, 2009

Holy cow! How did I miss this. 
If you like Durham you’ll love this.  If you thought you didn’t like Durham, this might make you reconsider. If you just overpaid for a home in Chapel Hill this might be depressing.

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Durham Image Watch

February 24, 2009

A recurring theme here at DurhamLuxRe.com is the importance of bringing Durham’s image in line with reality.  For years Durham had a reputation for chaotic government, poor schools, high crime rates and a crumbling downtown.  Some of the reputation might have been deserved but much has changed and the Durham that is emerging not only [...]

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Let’s Twitter Around Durham Luxury Real Estate

February 18, 2009

I’ve resisted the idea that old dogs can’t learn new tricks but recently getting my arms around the usefulness of the so-called “social media” like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter has been difficult. But I’m finally getting it, I think, maybe.
It turns out that they can be useful and a lot of fun. In the sidebar [...]

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Owner Financing?

February 7, 2009

I get bombarded with solicitations for money making “opportunities” that are vague about what is required until the offerer gets a credit card number and makes some money themselves.
While I was writing the last series of posts about marketing homes in a buyers market, I received one of these solicitations in the US mail. I [...]

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2008 Year End Summary

January 10, 2009

If you thought the market for luxury homes in Durham couldn’t get much worse, you were… right.
Durham finishes the year with 34 sales of homes that listed for over $700,000, although two of the four that sold in the 4th quarter closed for less than that threshold.  In 2007 there were 38 sales, in 2006, [...]

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Series Summary

December 26, 2008

With more sellers than buyers in the real estate market across the country, listing agents will need to employ more sophisticated approaches to marketing homes. In the Durham luxury home market, which had been slow even before the general market decline, these new approaches require even more urgency.  The preliminary data that I’ve looked at [...]

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Channel Marketing in Luxury Real Estate

December 23, 2008

Stan Lee and Me
The many years I spent in bank marketing I thought were pretty interesting but I notice that people’s eyes glaze over when I talk about how bank marketers had to learn a whole new set of skills during the period of deregulation in the late 70’s and early 80’s and how there [...]

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Changing the Present

December 23, 2008

I had intended on finishing the five part series on marketing luxury homes in the current environment before I left for a few days for Christmas and I may still, but I ran across this video that might interest any luxury blog followers that are still trying to think of meaningful gifts to give.  This [...]

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Promotion and writing copy

December 22, 2008

V8 engine in a Q45 Infinity
The most dramatic lesson I ever had about writing copy wasn’t even written down. I was shopping for a car and had my eye on a used Infinity Q45 that was at a Lexus dealership in Raleigh.  As I was pondering my decision the salesman happened to mention that he [...]

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Web Presence in the Luxury Market

December 21, 2008

Sometimes I wonder as I delete the 100th spam email that somehow gets past spam filters on the server and my computer whether the internet will be like our financial system and someday collapse under its own weight. The internet can be profane, invasive, distracting and misinforming. It gives voice, however feeble, to the ignorant [...]

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