Luxury Real Estate

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 at 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 Jean-Yves Piton

Today’s real estate marketplace is most definitely more technology-driven worldwide. This fact became even more evident during the Technology Roundtable held at the 6th Annual Luxury Real Estate Spring Retreat in San Diego. Top brokers in the luxury real estate industry are now seeking for more tools to become more productive and effective vis-à-vis their top competitors.

Here is an example: You never stepped into the agency today. You have already received many text messages from prospective buyers you need to follow up with this morning. Your property buyers located your ads on LuxuryRealEstate.com. They were able to view both photos and virtual tours of the properties they saw and liked. They also connected with you a few times via LiveChat on your PDA.

You have already called your clients back and all of your appointments are scheduled on your PDA phone. You are bringing along with you both your laptop and a data card to ensure you are able to share all the needed electronic documents, in case you need them. You have completed numerous successful property visits today. You are calling your 1-800 line to check any voicemails left at the office by any possible home buyers. Luckily, your Bluetooth headset allows you to do so while driving your car to another property.

You beat traffic since you are guided by your GPS. Before your client arrives, you have plenty of time to check the latest industry news on the LuxuryRealEstate.com Webzine, read blog entries on the LuxuryRealEstate.com Blog and educate consumers about market news on your blog. Time to see if you have received any signed contracts via your efax in your email inbox. While at it, you might as well update your customer database regarding today’s activities and before you forget.

Does this sound familiar?

Clearly, in order to gain a competitive edge and increase sales, it is critical to embrace new technologies in the new real-estate era.


Editor’s Note:
Jean-Yves Piton is the Global Services Membership Manager for LuxuryRealEstate.com. He assists Bente Madtsen, the Director of Global Services, in expanding the LuxuryRealEstate.com brand into even more countries around the world. Indeed, technology is bringing us new capabilities and expectations. We need to react quicker, think faster and be ready to meet clients’ changing needs. This is a time of incredible challenges and opportunities. The picture above is from www.dougbelshaw.com/tag/meetings.

By Joey Pauley

As many of you know, I was on the Technology Panel at the 6th Annual Luxury Real Estate Spring Retreat. One of the websites we talked about was the social-networking site LinkedIn of which I and many of our colleagues are members of. Here is my profile: www.linkedin.com/in/joeypauley.

I have to say it looks like a lot of people were listening because I have had a plethora of members contacting me via Linked In since the conference. We have even started a group for Members of Who’s Who of Luxury Real Estate so you can chat with fellow members of LinkedIn and LuxuryRealEstate.com. This is an excellent way to pose questions for the entire group to respond to.

LinkedIn has many useful features. I use LinkedIn to keep in contact with all of my previous colleagues, business partners and so on. I also find it useful to find people that I would like to be connected with. There is also a way to check up on industry news.

For brokers and agents, it would be advantageous to get recommendations from their clients. Once you receive a recommendation, everyone in the recommender’s network is notified of the superior work you provide. The people in your network are reminded of the high-quality work you provided to them previously. This keeps you in the mind of potential clients.

This is just one helpful social-networking hint. Who out there uses LinkedIn or another social networking service to their advantage?


Editor’s Note:
As a Technical Account Manager with LuxuryRealEstate.com, Joey Pauley helps members with their Web and technology needs. He does a phenomenal job in all of his projects, as you can see by visiting the many websites he has helped design. This reminds me of Brian Langhorst’s March 10, 2008 blog entry entitled “Are you LinkedIn?” I also highly recommend joining our Luxury Real Estate group on LinkedIn because it’s a great way to easily connect with other top professionals in the high-end industry. Happy networking!

By Courtney Jackson

The digital version of the spring issue of LuxuryRealEstate.com Magazine is now online! Click here to check it out: www.luxuryrealestate-digital.com/luxuryrealestate/2008spring/.

 

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. As the author of the editorials in this magazine, I can vouch for its quality. I hope you enjoy reading it!

By Joey Pauley

Over the years, people have predicted that the web would eventually go mobile. I was all for it, but, unfortunately, my phone’s capabilities were very thin. Blackberrys did a good job with email, but as for an elevated internet experience, they were barely getting past the ground floor.

Financial Times Google “said it had seen 50 times more searches on Apple‘s iPhone than any other mobile handset.” The results do not surprise me one bit. I have always been a proponent of Apple. Of course, sometimes they are a bit more concerned with form then function – cough, cough, Mac Book Air .

Apple’s user interfaces are unparalleled. The iPhone makes it easy for the average user to search the majority of sites on the Internet in a fashion they are already quite adept at doing. For those of us who create websites, it is very easy for us to create a site that is iPhone-compatible. For the most part, we need to be sure the sites aren’t too large, something we should already be proficient at doing.

Thanks, Apple, for saving us all some time. Now I have enough time to stop by the Apple Store to get a Mac Book Air. Those things look so cool.


Editor’s Note:
As a Technical Account Manager with LuxuryRealEstate.com, Joey Pauley helps members with their web and technology needs. He does a phenomenal job in all of his projects, as you can see by visiting the many websites he has helped design. Joey is definitely an expert on this sort of thing. My cell phone is also a bit less than spectacular when it comes to its online capabilities. But I’m looking forward to what the future holds.

By Brian Langhorst

Many websites provide networking opportunities to connect with colleagues, business partners, friends, etc. LinkedIn is my current frontrunner among the crowd to showcase a truly professional network. It is easy to use and very efficient to maintain.

I highly encourage all of our members to use this website to showcase their business and reach. We even have a Who’s Who in Luxury Real Estate group for you to join. Imagine the possibilities for referrals (incoming and outbound) if you were to really show the vast scope of your business network. Just thinking of the referral opportunities makes me excited for you.

Clients looking for professional representation from a REALTOR® need to easily see just how well-connected you are. I believe LinkedIn to be the best way to do just that. 

Log on today and see just what I am talking about!


Editor’s Note:
Brian Langhorst is an Account Manager with LuxuryRealEstate.com. He meets members’ unique needs through the dynamic services LuxuryRealEstate.com provides. I’m also a member of LinkedIn, and I recommend it, as well. It doesn’t take a whole lot of effort, and it allows you to stay connected with people you’ve known in the past as well as your current associates. Be sure to find other members of LuxuryRealEstate.com by searching with both "Who’s Who in Luxury Real Estate" and "LuxuryRealEstate.com." Some members use one or the other, so it’s best to search both names for our network.

By Courtney Jackson

I was reading Shelby Morris’ blog the other day about Print vs. Online advertising and I saw this great entry, entitled Internet Marketing vs. Print Ads, so I thought I would share it. The question this author posed was whether agents should do online or print advertising. One of the agents writing had decided to do just online. Below is a response by Matt Grohe that I thought was very telling:

“Shelby, I enjoy driving, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t ride a bike, walk, or take a bus or a train. In my estimation, a strategy based entirely on the Internet is a lopsided one.

“While sitting at my open house today reading Think Like a Winner by Walter Doyle Staples, the phone rang. The caller was asking about a listing I had closed more than a month ago. I asked her where she’d seen it, Homes and Land Magazine, and an old one at that. Turns out her computer was broken and she’s in transition. I schmoozed her a bit and got out of her what type of property she was looking for. She’s willing to go out looking tomorrow if I can find some homes that suit her. She’s reputedly pre-approved and has a letter (we’ll see).

“There’s a Long John Silver’s commercial that I find amusing and apt: A man is on a dock fishing with a single pole, he turns to the guy fishing next to him and asks ‘What’re you fishing for?’ The shot pans wider to show the second fisherman has about fifty different kinds of poles and lines, the second man remarks ‘Everything!’

”How many lines do you have in the water? You can’t catch all fish by the same method, some swim at different depths and some hit on different lines and lures.”


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. Indeed, this is a fascinating and relevant topic for all of us to ponder. Print advertising has not been replaced by online advertising, but these media forms have distinct strengths and weaknesses that can be used to reach different audiences. Use them wisely.