Keeping up!

July 29, 2008

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 [...]

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Pushing Durham

July 14, 2008

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, [...]

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Second Quarter Sales Analysis for Durham Luxury Homes

July 7, 2008

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 [...]

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Price Pressure in the Luxury Market

June 23, 2008

Seth Godin is an author, marketing guru and blogger whose posts are often short and sometimes cryptic but always interesting. This is a short post from June 20th that has relevance in the Durham luxury home market today. Your sales force and your customers may scream that you need to lower your price. It’s not [...]

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Somerhill Gallery Event

June 23, 2008

Lot’s of buzz last week at Rotary about the Somerhill Gallery grand opening event the previous Saturday at the old Venable warehouse in Downtown Durham. The relocation of this long term fixture of the Chapel Hill cultural scene to Durham is just another thing to brag about when marketing Durham’s luxury homes. This video was [...]

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Bull City Rising in Endangered Durham

June 16, 2008

Since about 1987 except for a few years when I was living in Durham but working in Raleigh I have been a member of the Downtown Durham Rotary Club. This club is over a hundred years old and Durham’s largest Rotary Club. For the last couple of years the program committee headed by Don Stanger [...]

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Advice – Good and Bad – from the Queen

June 12, 2008

Barbara Corcoran, according to Fortune Small Business via CNN.Money.com is the self-proclaimed queen of New York real estate. Corcoran founded the Corcoran Group 35 years ago and sold it in 2001 for $66 million. To put it mildly, she is colorful. The profile reports that when sales of her business book Use What You’ve Got [...]

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Buying Luxury Homes in Durham

June 11, 2008

One section of the Newcomers Guide to Buying Luxury Homes in Durham specifically addresses some of the technical issues that can vary from state to state. The most important of these is the concept of agency. Until a few years ago, all real estate agents technically represented the seller in a transaction, even when that [...]

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Durham’s Growth

June 11, 2008

The link is to a terrific post last month to Reyn Bowman’s Bull City Mutterings. It relates Durham’s growth to the growth in the number of hotel rooms and the importance of tourism. Very interesting way of looking at things. Reyn is the leader of the Durham Convention and Visitor’s Bureau and has been aggressively [...]

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Why Focus on Durham Luxury Homes

June 5, 2008

I began this blog a few months ago after watching the luxury market in Durham for several years. For most of that time I was a licensed agent but not actively seeking clients.  For almost two years I was helping manage another firm and my bosses wanted me to focus on that and not my [...]

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Branding and Luxury Homes

June 3, 2008

A friend and reader of the Durham Luxury Real Estate blog forwarded an article to me about branding in real estate. The analysis was primarily intended for large national developers but it made some points worth considering in our effort to improve the marketing of luxury properties in Durham. This blog has taken the point [...]

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Real Estate Commissions

May 21, 2008

After college and teaching for several years I decided that I wanted to try the corporate world. When I went shopping for appropriate business attire, a close family friend advised that when I bought a suit to always ask the merchant to throw in a shirt and a tie. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it [...]

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Wealthy See Opportunities in Real Estate

May 16, 2008

MarketWatch.com on the Wall Street Journal Digital Network recently reported on research that indicated that the country’s wealthiest citizens believe that it’s a good time to buy real estate. We agree with that. Borrowing rates are still good for the credit worthy and opportunities abound to negotiate with nervous sellers. Click the link for the [...]

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Durham Ranked 12th by Fortune Small Business

May 15, 2008

Fortune Small Business recently ranked Durham number 12 in the country in its list of the 100 best places to live and launch a business. The complete list and the write up on Durham is linked here at the CNNMoney website. The short write-up is what you might expect about the high-tech environment, cultural opportunities, [...]

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Site Change – Easy Access to Lux Report

May 9, 2008

Originally the link in the left sidebar to the Durham Luxury Report for 2008 took you to a landing page which captured a name and email address that had to be verified before access was given to the report. The system provides statistics on who has shared this information and downloaded the report. There was [...]

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