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. [...]

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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 [...]

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Series Summary

December 26, 2008
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We all appreciate tips 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 [...]

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Channel Marketing in Luxury Real Estate

December 23, 2008
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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 [...]

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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
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Well I am a guy after all. 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 [...]

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Web Presence in the Luxury Market

December 21, 2008
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Using the Web to Sell Luxury Real Estate in Durham Sometimes I wonder as I delete the 100th spam email that somehow gets past spam filters 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 [...]

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The Primacy of Product

December 18, 2008
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While Real Estate waits in vain for a hero to come along and rescue it, sellers should get smart. If you ever need your spirits lifted around Christmas and have seen It’s a Wonderful Life about ten too many times, pretend like you’re twelve again and watch a dog story. I was going to do [...]

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Pricing in Today’s Market

December 16, 2008
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Pricing in the luxury market is trickier than in what might be called the “commodity home” market. The more unique a home is the more pricing becomes an art than a science. As a ridiculous example in a post in March I used the  an estate in Lake Tahoe pictured below that was on the [...]

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Christmas Present

December 15, 2008
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Two Themes Anyone planning to put a luxury home on the market in the spring will start thinking about it months in advance under normal conditions. Since conditions in the real estate market are anything but normal now, Christmas is not too early to begin planning a market launch in the spring. The Under-performing Durham [...]

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Durham Historical Calendar

December 12, 2008

I got a nice note today reminding me that not all that is great about Durham is shiny and new like the Performing Arts Center. Shelly Green, the COO of the Durham Convention and Visitors Bureau emailed me that she had put a copy in the mail to me of the 2009 Historical Calendar of [...]

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Style in a Down Market

December 1, 2008

A brief article in the business section of the New York Times this morning chronicled the impact the economic downturn is having on publications geared to the upscale market including the quarterly from Time magazine called Time Style and Design and the NYT’s occasional New York Times Style Magazine. These publications, of course, are meant [...]

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Inman Post

November 25, 2008

Inman news is a real estate industry site “Where Real Estate and Technology Connect.” There are usually blog-like discussions going on about various topics in the real estate industry. This morning’s lead article was nominally about how real estate offices must shrink (to reduce costs) but was really more handwringing about where the industry is [...]

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A Real Marketing Plan

November 15, 2008

When I first got my real estate license I assummed that my many years of marketing experience and the knowledge I had acquired renovating and flipping a couple of condos would be a good basis for my new career. I was mistaken. I didn’t fit the profile at all of what the industry considered a [...]

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Another Dog Story

November 7, 2008

Dogs have been on my mind lately. The national news tonight ended with a story with speculation about what kind of puppy our president elect’s two daughters would choose after he announced in his victory speech that this is one promise he could keep with little difficulty. Personally, I hope the Obamas can find and [...]

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