I recently had the honor of joining in a panel discussion at Inman Connect for their 20th Anniversary conference in San Francisco alongside Paul Boomsma of Luxury Portfolio and Elizabeth Anne Kivan of Stribling and Associates in New York City.
The panel, entitled “The Big Chill: How to get Your Luxury Clients off the Fence in Uncertain Times”, gave insight on current dynamics and how today’s market is impacting high-end property seller and buyers. The panel also featured marketing and sales strategies that real estate professionals can start doing today to combat the uncertainty of tomorrow.
I’ve broken up my top three takeaways into this three-part blog series. Here is the first.
1. Be honest with your clients.
As marketers, we oftentimes throw around words like “transparency” and “authenticity.” But what do these words really mean to your everyday business?
Concierge Auctions was founded in foresight to the pending market decline and economic downturn in 2008. Revolutionizing the industry since, our platform has quickly become an additional tool in the toolbox for the buying and selling of high-end real estate.
I mention this because not only does the very nature of our process give control back to agents and sellers — and, regardless of market conditions, as we know properties in this luxury and ultra-luxury space are always difficult to valuate — but particularly in an uncertain market, we know that real estate is cyclical. This is why, for the past year, we’ve been discussing market uncertainty with our agent partners and advising clients on what is ahead, especially during an election year.
Conversely, we are experiencing positive leverage in the following areas:
1. The number of properties that we are taking to market, to the tune of a 25-percent increase in Q2 over Q1 of this year.
2. We are already signing properties into our platform for Q4.
3. On the buyer side, we continue to see an increase from our nurturing of prospects in the average number of registered bidders participating in our auctions.
If we can draw one lesson (and there are many) from the bubble in 2008, perhaps it is that, as an industry, we were all afraid to tell our clients the truth about where the market was heading. As real estate professionals, we have to be honest. Honest with ourselves, and honest with our clients, advising them on what is best for them. Because, at the end of the day, clients aren’t just turning to you for advice in the investment of their real estate, but they are making an investment in you yourself. Know your clients’ motivations — why they are selling? Why they are buying?
Next week, we discuss the importance of the first 30 days on market.