Luxury Real Estate

By Robert Lockard

Cluttons Barbados, a member of LuxuryRealEstate.com, has re-branded itself as an associate office of Cluttons LLP and re-launched its website: www.cluttonsbarbados.com. Cluttons LLP was established in 1765 and has offices throughout the United Kingdom, Europe, Middle East, South Africa and now Barbados in the Caribbean.

Cluttons Barbados is one of the UK’s leading estate agencies, providing service to home buyers, home owners, property developers and investors, fund and real-estate investment companies and global hotel chains. Check out their website for more information!


Editor’s Note:
Robert Lockard is the Public Relations & Media Specialist with LuxuryRealEstate.com. I am Robert. I create all of Luxury Real Estate’s newsletters, write the editorials in LuxuryRealEstate.com Magazine and much more. It’s exciting to see LuxuryRealEstate.com’s international growth, and it is thanks in large part to the efforts of Global Services Membership Manager Jean-Yves Piton and Board of Regents Program Director Bente Madtsen.

By Brian Langhorst

The luxury real estate market place is filled with various companies with very strong branding messages for the corporation. What are you as an agent doing to stand out from the other competing agents in your own company?

Editor’s Note:
Brian Langhorst is LuxuryRealEstate.com’s Membership Manager. He meets members’ unique needs through the dynamic services LuxuryRealEstate.com provides. Short and sweet – just the way I like blog entries! LuxuryRealEstate.com can help you stand out with print and online advertisements in The Wall Street Journal, LuxuryRealEstate.com Magazine and more. The above picture is from www.flickr.com/photos/vieuxbandit/499540173 and is the copyright of vieux bandit.

By Robert Lockard

A helpful warning to bloggers: “Be prepared.” It’s the Boy Scout motto and it’s also good advice for people in all walks of life. It appears that many bloggers, myself included, are a little unprepared for the possibility of close scrutiny of blogging. What if we were told that we had used too much of someone else’s news article in our blog entry or that we got our facts wrong and are guilty of negligence or even defamation? It’s a scary thought, but that’s the risk we take in offering our work in a public environment.

Have you noticed that, as bloggers, our responsibilities and rules seem to be a little hazy and hard to define? It sometimes does to me. Luckily, in college I studied media law, fair-use doctrine and other libel laws, so I have a pretty good understanding of what is allowed and forbidden when writing content.

The rules can get pretty complex, but they boil down to the fact that writers need to respect others’ rights by not stealing their work, spreading lies about them or being unfairly critical of people we disagree with. I don’t believe I’ve witnessed any of that in the discussions I have seen on ActiveRain and the LuxuryRealEstate.com Blog, but it’s still important to keep in mind. Kindness and honesty are generally essential for free speech and democracy to thrive. I have no desire to defame anyone because my goal is to uplift by exercising the Golden Rule as much as possible.

When you use a news story or another person’s blog in your work, make sure to give credit to the person you borrow from. I always strive to do that when I write a blog entry, since much of my inspiration for writing about specific topics comes from news sources and other bloggers. Actually, this blog was inspired by two news articles: a Seattle Times article by Brier Dudley entitled “Battle of the day: AP vs. blogs,” and Marcie Geffner’s article in Inman News entitled “Is your blog a lawsuit magnet?” I highly recommend reading them both so you can make sure you’re aware of some potential pitfalls.

The one thing I don’t know too much about is the fair use of photos in blogs. I almost always provide a link to the source of the photos I use, and I try to include the photographer/artist when it’s available. Maybe someone can help me out on this aspect of fair use because I’m unsure what the rule is there. Is it okay as long as we give credit to the person responsible for the work or do we need to obtain written permission? Speaking of which, the photo above is from www.flickr.com/photos/katiegail/1344714672, and it is the copyright of rakastajatar on Flickr. I got the idea to check Flickr for a safer photo to use because of Ms. Geffner's comment in my ActiveRain Blog.

In closing, I strongly advise you to pay close attention to Ms. Geffner’s 17 questions in her Inman News article. I won’t reprint them here because I wouldn’t want to use too much of her work or remove the incentive to visit her site. As I read them, I went over in my mind the times when I had encountered these different situations or at least considered them. I hope this helps you be a little better-prepared in case anything like this might come up as you blog.

Happy blogging!


Editor’s Note:
Robert Lockard is the Public Relations & Media Specialist with LuxuryRealEstate.com. I am Robert. I create all of Luxury Real Estate’s newsletters, write the editorials in LuxuryRealEstate.com Magazine and much more. I hope this helps. Feel free to contact me with your suggestions about the photo issue I mentioned.

By Courtney Jackson

Our latest ad in The Wall Street Journal hit newsstands today. If you aren't able to pick up a copy of this issue, you can view the ad in color at www.luxuryrealestate.com/wsj.

Editor’s Note:
Courtney Jackson is the Print Director for LuxuryRealEstate.com. She works closely with The Wall Street Journal, Unique Homes and a variety of other publications to help luxury brokers gain domestic and international exposure for their properties. Don’t forget to advertise in print as well as online. Publications like The Wall Street Journal are great for reaching specific audiences as well as online readers. Check it out!

By Grant Hermes

“Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is a burden, not a benefit.”
~ William Pollard

Nowadays, information spreads and multiplies exponentially throughout the Internet. Who has time to spend hours a day sifting and sorting through endless websites in search of useful and, more importantly, up-to-date news? I know I certainly do not. This is where RSS feeds are a lifesaver for me.

When you see the  icon all you have to do is click on it and add it as a bookmark or to a reader of your choice. Try it out by clicking on the “Articles” RSS feed on this blog page (just look for the  icon to find it). Now you have a current look at the most-recent posts to the LuxuryRealEstate.com Blog. I personally place all my feeds in my bookmarks toolbar so they’re right in front of me. Another useful RSS feed I use is from RISMedia.com (they have dozens of feeds but I use the Real Estate-specific feed as well as a few others – check them out).

I always saw links for RSS feeds before, but just never clicked on them until this past week. Let me tell you, it is the greatest addition to my Internet browser. In one click, I get a snapshot of a site’s blog posts or articles and, most importantly, if any new ones have been posted. I feel more informed than ever on world news by being able to quickly and effortlessly scan through headlines, and if I want more detailed information it’s just a click away.

Hopefully this will help you narrow down and sort through the overwhelming amount of information out there that’s important to you but which you just don’t have time to sort through.

If you need it…RSS picture is complements of http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA102200751033.aspx


Editor’s Note:
Grant Hermes is the Staff Accountant for LuxuryRealEstate.com. He assists Controller James Hughes with all of the necessary paperwork and accounting to keep LuxuryRealEstate.com running smoothly. This is the first blog entry I’ve received from Grant, and it’s quite a smashing one. RSS feeds are quite helpful in our information-saturated environment, like the quote at the start of this blog entry notes. It doesn’t help to have a huge library if none of the books are correctly ordered or easily accessible to readers. Thank goodness for RSS feeds, which are kind of like a high-tech Dewey Decimal System. And thanks for the explanation, Grant!

By Robert Lockard

As a follow-up to my last blog entry, I’d like to report on the interview LuxuryRealEstate.com Publisher/CEO John Brian Losh enjoyed on Lakefront Radio on Friday, June 20, 2008. It went very well, and I have to give a lot of credit to hosts Mary Thompson, Chuck Thompson and Lee Kantor for asking great questions and being a lot of fun on air. They sound like they really enjoy their work.

You can listen to the full 38-minute radio show online.

Mr. Losh discussed the recent sale of Donald Trump’s $100 million estate and some other great news items. He also went into great detail about LuxuryRealEstate.com, the most-viewed luxury real estate website in the world, and several aspects of the Who’s Who in Luxury Real Estate network, including membership requirements. He specifically focused on Atlanta, naming Harry Norman, Realtors, the Board of Regents member in Atlanta, and Jenny Pruitt & Associates, REALTORS® as two prominent members in the area.

As I mentioned earlier, I was really impressed by Lakefront Radio hosts Mary, Chuck and Lee. They were all so easygoing and patient in their approach at the microphone, something I found very refreshing in talk radio. Some shows sound like the speakers are constantly interrupting each other, but these hosts found a great balance in their style. Great job!

Mr. Losh said that some of the finest luxury locations in the world are in South America and East Europe. He also mentioned that his favorite city in the world is Venice, Italy because it’s so quiet, with no cars or motorbikes to disrupt the peace. His favorite city in the United States (besides his hometown of Seattle, of course) is Carmel, Calif., near Pebble Beach, because it’s “popular, but not too popular” and very relaxing.

All in all, it was a great radio show. I hope you’ll enjoy listening to it if you have the time. Be sure to check it out every Friday because the hosts are dedicated to talking about positive real-estate news that can sometimes fall by the way when large media outlets focus so much on negative news. Truly an admirable endeavor!


Editor’s Note:
Robert Lockard is the Public Relations & Media Specialist with LuxuryRealEstate.com. I am Robert. I create all of Luxury Real Estate’s newsletters, write the editorials in LuxuryRealEstate.com Magazine and much more. Be sure to visit the Lakefront Radio website to hear the whole program. It was very nice.

By Brian Langhorst

Did you know that we track the number of listings that you upload that do not have addresses? We are undertaking a membership-wide commitment to improve the quality of the data/listings that are on LuxuryRealEstate.com.

This is a very exciting and strong opportunity for all of us. When you enter your listings with accurate information it helps us to provide tools and accurate search results for your and our end customers – the buyer! So please enter all the information you have on to all of your listing on LuxuryRealEstate.com!

Please contact me to speak more about your listings and how to get the most out of your membership with us. Email me at blanghorst@LuxuryRealEstate.com.


Editor’s Note:
Brian Langhorst is LuxuryRealEstate.com’s Membership Manager. He meets members’ unique needs through the dynamic services LuxuryRealEstate.com provides. We at LuxuryRealEstate.com are committed to providing excellent service to brokers around the world and to buyers and sellers, as well. Be sure to take the time to contact Brian to find out more about how you can make your listings more effective on our Web site.

By Brian Langhorst

You may have noticed that LuxuryRealEstate.com Magazine can now be viewed over the Internet, digitally. Our company did this for a few reasons: to increase distribution of the magazine and listings of our members, and to increase distribution in a manner that reduces printing and paper use, thus reducing our carbon footprint and environmental impact.

I recently learned that our distinguished Luxury Real Estate member, Jenny Pruitt & Associates in Atlanta, Georgia and surrounding area, took their magazine The Atlanta Collection digital as well.

We will be more than happy to speak with you and your print team about what is necessary to do this. Please feel free to contact me at blanghorst@LuxuryRealEstate.com to learn more.


Editor’s Note:
Brian Langhorst is LuxuryRealEstate.com’s Membership Manager. He meets members’ unique needs through the dynamic services LuxuryRealEstate.com provides. Reduce, reuse and recycle. Growing up in Washington state, those words were often impressed upon me. I’m all for being good stewards over the land we possess. Being able to reach an even broader audience than would be possible through traditional paper media is an added benefit of conserving resources. Excellent point, Brian! The cover of The Atlanta Collection is from Pruitt Pulse, an awesome real-estate blog.

By Brian Langhorst

Lately, the keyword in advertising is international! Everyone wants international exposure as foreign currencies are very strong compared to the U.S. dollar. This strength presents great options for investors to come to the United States and purchase real estate. I agree that this is a great target audience, given the current situation.

I also wanted to throw out some facts from Forbes.com, which recently compiled a list of the top billionaires in the world. These facts drew my attention to the importance of continuing to market domestically as well as globally. Of the 1,125 billionaires in the world, 444 or 39.4 percent are citizens of the United States. This is by far the highest number of individuals in one country anywhere in the world. In your marketing campaigns be sure to reach out to both audiences.

There are several print magazines that do a very good job reaching both international and domestic buyers. LuxuryRealEstate.com Magazine, Unique Homes and Country Life all work very well. We are happy to help you design ads and market to these key groups. Please contact me with questions or to advertise: blanghorst@LuxuryRealEstate.com.

What are you doing to reach both domestic and international markets?


Editor’s Note:
Brian Langhorst is LuxuryRealEstate.com’s Membership Manager. He meets members’ unique needs through the dynamic services LuxuryRealEstate.com provides. In addition to these excellent publications, we also run group ads in The Wall Street Journal, and we have one coming up on June 27, 2008 that you can sign up for. Contact our Print Director, Courtney Jackson, for details.

By Robert Lockard

I originally planned on writing this blog entry earlier this week on the proposed settlement between the National Association of REALTORS® and the Department of Justice that would allow multiple listing service members to make private MLS information available to non-members. However, immediately after the story broke, plenty of real-estate bloggers came up with all sorts of reactions, positive, negative and neutral. Now I’m having trouble coming up with something to add to their expert opinions. I hope you’ll bear with me.

I’ll start by quoting Malcom Forbes (1919-1990), the father of Steve Forbes, current publisher of Forbes Magazine, “It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem.” My knowledge of the MLS is certainly not as impressive as those who have already voiced their opinions, but I’ll just try to bring my thoughts to the table in an interesting way and you can feel free to correct me if I mistake some details.

It seems to me that this really shouldn’t be that big of a deal. I agree with what Geoff Lewis, Senior Counsel for RE/MAX International, said in Glenn Roberts Jr.’s Inman News article entitled “Blogosphere reacts to proposed NAR/DOJ settlement.” He basically said that a lot of the information that will be opened up to public use by this decision has already been made public through free online sites.

The majority of home buyers start their search for a new home online and so, if you think about it, they’re already finding the homes they’re looking for without needing to log on to websites controlled by MLS members. There’s a lot of free information already available online. For example, buyers don’t have to pay anything to search for luxury properties on LuxuryRealEstate.com, even though they can find more than 55,000 such properties in 100 countries on that site.

It’s advantageous for brokers to share information freely with buyers and sellers because then they can allow the right people to find the properties they’re seeking more quickly. At least that’s what I think.

As Mr. Forbes eloquently pointed out earlier, it’s easy to say what I think, but I might not have the whole picture. The MLS, which I understand is not a completely homogenized collection of listings but a variety of different ones in different formats, is not necessarily a public good. It was created by a private organization to give a competitive advantage to specific professionals, and there might be less of an incentive to provide this service if there are few limits to who can access it.

The Internet age is changing the way we think about many things, including marketing and real estate. But perhaps it’s still true that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Anyway, that’s my contribution to this wonderful exchange of ideas known as the blogosphere.


Editor’s Note:
Robert Lockard is the Public Relations & Media Specialist with LuxuryRealEstate.com. I am Robert. I create all of Luxury Real Estate’s newsletters, write the editorials in LuxuryRealEstate.com Magazine and much more. I welcome your input on this story. The Multiple Listing Service logo above is from: www.nsrealestate.ca/listings4.htm.