Luxury Real Estate

Courtesy of Frederick Peters, President of Warburg Realty

Every buyer is at some point a seller. But the personality of a buyer changes completely when that transition occurs. The same person who, as a buyer, offers low and doesn’t want to raise the offer to meet the seller’s “unrealistic expectations” becomes a seller and behaves in an identical fashion to the seller he so recently reviled-and usually without an ounce of self-consciousness. The question is how to make those seller expectations as realistic as possible? What do you need to do to maximize the value of your property? The economy is uncertain, the Eurozone is struggling-the last thing most buyers want is an additional headache. So how do you, as a seller, make your property the SOLUTION to a buyer’s problems rather than an extension of them? Let’s look at some ideas:

· Make sure you have all the proper documentation. Do you have all the sign offs from the contractors who did your renovation? Do you have a record of the Board’s approval of the renovation? Any buyer’s lawyer will want to see them. Did you combine apartments? If so, do you have a record of the Board’s approval of THAT? Have you removed the second kitchen and taken the other steps to make sure the combined space is completely legal? Do it before you take the property to market. How about the building’s recent financial statements? You will need them.

· As soon as you decide you are going to sell, start throwing things away. You can put a lot of your possessions in storage, but make triply sure you REALLY want them first. When we moved our second home recently, we threw a lot of our stuff away and then put the rest in storage for 18 months while we renovated. Then we moved into the house, unpacked everything, and threw away half of the things we had stored. So be ruthless the first time.

· Once you have gotten rid of a lot of debris, walk through the house with your broker and a critical eye to see what needs to be done. Chipping paint on the ceiling? Fix it. Bulging tile in the bathroom? Fix it. Those dark purple walls you thought were so cool? Paint them white. Replace the 40 watt bulbs with 60 watt bulbs. Or 75 watt bulbs. Buy a couple of halogen torcheres and but them in the dark corners to cast uplight. The goal is a space which looks under-furnished, airy, and bright.

· Try to think of the convenience of the buyer and not your own convenience. Make the showing hours as liberal as possible. Work overtime to keep mess to a minimum. Keep buying flowers. Make the beds. Kids (even teenagers) can be made to understand that selling the property is financially significant, and having their rooms look like Satan’s lair is NOT conducive to a successful sale!

· Price to sell. Remind yourself of what it felt like to be a buyer and let that inform your decisions as a seller. You want to choose a number which will draw the buyers in, not shut them out.

There are no guarantees in real estate sales; even the most experienced agents cannot say for certain how long the sale of your home may take. But if you follow these steps you are significantly improving the odds in your favor.

Courtesy of Paragon Lodging

20% off three nights or more over the 4th of July Holiday weekend

Escape the heat and spend the 4th of July weekend in the mountains!

Activities galore! The "4th of July Celebration" activities include the Firecracker 50 Mountain Bike Race, 28th Annual July Art Festival, the Independence 10k Trail Run, Main Street Parade, Free Concert at 2:00pm with Rusted Root, National Repertory Orchestra Concert at 8:30pm, Breckenridge town fireworks show (weather permitting) at 9:30pm. All activities are in and around Breckenridge. Contact our office for details.

Book your upcoming celebration vacation weekend directly through Paragon Lodging by calling toll-free: 877-828-8171

(Photo: Adobe Ski Bridge - Breckenridge, CO)

Courtesy of Jordan Blakesley of Voca PR

Beaver Dam Farms, built and designed by country music legend Kenny Rogers, is an expansive 973-acre private estate tucked away in the rolling foothills of Athens, Georgia, on the original site of one of the state’s grandest plantations. Just listed for $20 million, this luxurious, fully-furnished estate features a 12,000 sq. ft. main house complete with two gyms, a movie theater, a billiards room, and an Italian marble wraparound porch. For guests, the estate also offers a six bedroom guest home, a four bedroom guest home, and four one bedroom villas. Purchased from Rogers by the Wes Adams family in 2003, Beaver Dam Farms still includes Rogers’ (an accomplished interior designer and one-time partner in an Atlanta design firm) one-of-a-kind design and many of his original furnishings.

The centerpiece of Beaver Dam Farms is a private (as in, only for the owner - there are no members), 6,285 yard, 18-hole executive championship golf course that Rogers designed after years spent traveling to play some of the world’s best, and is often compared to world-renowned Augusta National. The course has played host to golfing greats Payne Stewart, Lanny Wadkins and Ray Floyd, as well as many of Rogers’ celebrity friends. The estate also includes a clubhouse, a 90,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art equestrian and multi-use facility, two barns, a lake house, two swimming pools, clay tennis courts, a spa, conference center, various outdoor entertaining venues and three fish-stocked lakes.

Courtesy of Judi Desiderio of Town & Country Real Estate

The Artists and Writers Softball Game, which began back in 1948 as a summer picnic, was first played on the lawn of this home originally owned by Wilfrid Zogbaum. Participants of the first games included Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Philip Pavia, Jackson Pollock and Joan Mitchell. It wasn’t until the late 60’s and 70’s that writers joined in the fun and shortly thereafter politicians, actors, musicians, publishers, editors and television personalities batted and fielded the now famous annual Artist Writers Game played in Herrick Park, East Hampton.

Some of the games’ notables over the years include Alan Alda, Ken Auletta, Alec Baldwin, Yogi Berra, Matthew Broderick, Chevy Chase, Bill Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Peter Jennings, Mike Lupica, Regis Philbin, Paul Simon, Roy Scheider, Eli Wallach and Mort Zuckerman.

This home is nestled on 10+ harbor front acres which include a home, barn, waterside pool, and of course the sprawling lawn where history began with the softball game so many years ago. Represented by Town & Country Real Estate in East Hampton, this property is being offered for $4,990,000. IN#31336

Courtesy of Nick Horton of New Zealand Luxury Real Estate Limited

New Zealand's luxury property experts Nick Horton and Terry Spice with the brokerage New Zealand Luxury Real Estate Limited have been engaged to sell New Zealand's most expensive real estate listing. The record breaking property titled Rahimoana is listed for sale at $43,500,000 USD and is located on the North Island of New Zealand near the quaint town of Russell in the Bay of Islands. The incredible property is perched on the highest hill on a private peninsula overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Rahimoana is the ultimate South Pacific legacy asset, a functional sculpture that pushes the boundaries and compares to the best of the best in luxury houses around the globe. The stunning building sits facing north on a 44 acre private headland overlooking unlimited deep water anchorage and has panoramic views of New Zealand’s famed Bay of Islands. Beautifully landscaped grounds connect to over one kilometre of private beach via an easy walking track through native forest. This property, built by its current owners and completed in 2006, is of a standard that will impress the most astute aficionado of global luxury homes.

Courtesy of Kirsty Bryson of Luxury Homes by VAPF

One of the luxury modern villa designs by Luxury Homes by VAPF features in this month’s edition of the Hong Kong Tatler as one of the 7 most stunning seaside villas in the world.

The Spanish luxury real estate developer’s villa “Cala Moraig” was the only European property chosen to appear alongside other beachfront properties scattered around the world: Australia, Cambodia, Hawaii, Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands and the States.

The cliff top villa Cala Moraig stands out, not only for the magnificent views across the Mediterranean Sea, with 180 degree water views, but also for the unusual and modern design, which integrates well into the natural rocky landscape of the Costa Blanca coast, whilst maintaining traditional Mediterranean architectural traits.

The well thought out layout for easy modern day living and the glass frontage to make the most of the fabulous vistas are the 2 factors that really make this property highly desirable, or, in Tatler’s words, a “beauty”.

Click here to read the article.

Courtesy of Luxury Real Estate

Luxury Real Estate is pleased to announce the inclusion of MacArthur & Company Sotheby’s International Realty in its prestigious network of fine high-end estate brokers and firms. MacArthur & Company Sotheby’s International Realty was selected to represent the island of Hawaii at the invitation of Chairman/Publisher John Brian Losh. Mr. Losh extends membership invitations to brokers and firms throughout the world who consistently demonstrate expertise in the marketing of luxury properties. Currently, Who’s Who in Luxury Real Estate includes more than 1,400 members with properties in 67 countries and nearly every state in the U.S.

This exclusive group’s properties can be viewed on the network’s award-winning Web site LuxuryRealEstate.com, the most-viewed real estate Web site expressly dedicated to luxury properties. The site features more than 60,000 of the world’s finest for-sale listings with an average price of more than $2 million. According to the Web information service Google Analytics, LuxuryRealEstate.com receives more than 2.6 million unique page views per month coming in from 197 countries around the world.

The 2011 edition of Who’s Who in Luxury Real Estate’s annual membership directory is available by calling MacArthur & Company Sotheby’s International Realty or writing to: Who’s Who in Luxury Real Estate, 2110 Western Avenue, Seattle, Washington 98121.

Courtesy of Ron & Alexandra Seigel, Language of Luxury Community Founders, Managing Partners of Napa Consultants, International

For those of you who wish to escape the intensity of the city and enjoy a quieter, more relaxed, simpler life with a graceful pace reminiscent of the 1950’s, the magnificent Santa Ynez Valley, in California’s Santa Barbara Wine Country, is the place for you. We asked some of the top luxury real estate marketing professionals in the area to tell us what they loved about their marketplace. Learn More Here!

Courtesy of Frederick Peters, President of Warburg Realty

The New York City press loves to write about our lack of an MLS. In article after article, the reader can learn that there is no formal mechanism for sharing listings in the Manhattan market, and that agents and agencies are motivated by greed in NOT sharing listings so they can keep the entire commission themselves. Nothing could be further from the truth!

What IS true is that our community came late to the idea of sharing information. Long after MLS had become the norm in other urban and suburban communities, we were still like 14th century France, a collection of warring fiefdoms. Until REBNY (The Real Estate Board of New York) organized its Residential Division in the late 1980s, we didn’t talk to each other, much less work together. Gradually over the following decade that changed, and co-brokerage between firms became more the norm. It was not until the new millennium however, that this work became codified and co-brokerage between REBNY members became not only usual, but necessary.

For many years after we began working together, we could choose the firms with whom we wanted to share our listings, and when we wanted to share them. Typically, many of us larger firms shared more reliably with each other than with many of the smaller firms, and it is true that if we thought we could sell a listing in-house we were less inclined to share it. That was particularly true in the late 80s and 90s, when our principal form of listing communication was the fax. The rise of the Internet brought us all into the 21st century. It did not make real estate agents obsolete, as many had predicted, but it did facilitate our ability to communicate.

Of course, nothing is easy. Our warring fiefdoms could not agree on how to work together, or with whom, or under what circumstances. So we missed the opportunity to design a listing system with a public platform, the hallmark of MLS systems all over the country. We were so fearful of losing control that we LOST control, first to the New York Times, which became the go-to venue for on line listings, and more recently to StreetEasy, which buyers and sellers now depend on for real time information. But even though we did not (until recently) have a strong public portal for showing our listings to the public in a compelling, user friendly way, we did manage to automate and create rules for the sharing of listings with one another. Our data exchange system is called the RLS (REBNY Listing Service).

Today, thanks to the RLS, the vast majority of our deals are co-brokered, with one agent representing the buyer and another the seller. For all practical purposes, the RLS functions much like an MLS. All member firms (and in Manhattan almost ALL firms are members) are required to input their listings and share them throughout the system within 24 hours. So a customer working with ANY RLS member has immediate access to every listing in the database, from firms large and small, from Washington Heights to Battery Park. This is clearly much better for the buyer, who can select one agent with whom he or she feels comfortable and not be apprehensive lest the chosen agent not have access to some secret cache of listings. It is also much better for the seller, who can choose an exclusive agent and be confident that within 24 hours pretty much every agent in the city will know about the property.

In recent months, the RLS has also acquired a new public face. REBNY has partnered with NY 1 to create www.ny1residential.com, a public portal with the most up to date information on the listings of most of the major firms. While not everyone is participating yet (yes, our community still can resemble a herd of unruly cats), this site, with completely up-to-date listing information flowing directly from our listing systems, should become the consumer’s best source of local real estate information. So while it may be true, strictly speaking, that Manhattan doesn’t have an MLS, that brings no disadvantage to today’s real estate consumer. The firms all share listings promptly and completely, and as ny1residential.com continues to develop, it will become that Grail so many agents AND consumers have hoped for, a complete, reliable, error free venue for current listing information in our fast-paced market.

Courtesy of Jack Cotton of Sotheby's International Realty

In an interesting article in the Cape Cod Times about incorporating technology into today’s real estate market, Sarah Shemkus writes:

“HYANNIS — Travelers taking the Hy-Line ferry through Hyannis Harbor recently may have noticed a puzzling sign on a piling in front of a waterside home.”

To read this article in its entirety, click here.