The
entire Real Estate industry is built on the premise that past performance is
the best and only indicator of future success – thus, “the market” is what
happened yesterday or last month. But what if that way of looking at
things actually hid the greatest single source of viable purchasers out there
in the world today?
Our
latest study, conducted in April 2012, showed that 90% of the people who intend
to purchase Real Estate in the next 12 months are NEO’s. Unless real
estate is reduced to the price where it is effectively risk free, the 52% of
the population that are Traditionals will not touch it. They see it
as unsafe and want to know that not only have prices firmly recovered but that
they are going to stay that way before they jump back in.
And
what if those NEOs aren’t able to find the one and only properties they are
looking for? Traditional wisdom will tell you that they will simply
buy something else. I’m here to tell you the exact opposite - and
the harsh truth of the matter is that they just won’t buy.
The
Four Seasons Private Residences Denver has been a case study for Fingerprint
Strategies over the past the past 5 years, but no timeframe has been more
relevant or telling than the past 6 months. In summary, we have sold
62 condominiums for a total of $82.5M while the entire comparable condominium
market in downtown Denver has seen just 18 sales for a total of $18M over the
same timeframe.
That’s
a 460% market share and it’s in complete contrast to the cumulative comparable
sales history of 2011. Has “the market changed” that much or is this
just a Denver factor? What about your city?
The
answers are simple – NO the market hasn’t really changed very much at all if
you look at the overall sales activity. No, this is not a Denver factor. And
YES it can happen in your town because the type of people who are buying this
property are in every state of the Union and we know more about them than
anyone else on the planet.
The
success of the Four Seasons Private Residences Denver is due to the fact that
there were enough elements about it that we could make it a one & only
in the eyes of the NEO buyers in the city. Until the things that
distinctly matter to these people were brought out, it was just another failed
real estate project in a city and a country that has lots of them.
Again,
let’s consider the traditional notion that past market performance dictates the
future. Looking at the Downtown Denver condominium market outside of
the Four Seasons of the entire 2011, there were a total of 46 comparable
sales. If one falsely assumed that those sales represented the
market as a whole (or all of the buyers looking to buy), one would have then
been led to believe that with the introduction of the Four Seasons to the
marketplace, that they would have participated in some portion of those
sales.
However,
this didn’t happen in the slightest.
What
happened is worth noting for businesses and projects all over the country and
beyond – in 2012, the Four Seasons Private Residences Denver has reached the
buyers that aren’t present in the rear view mirror and in doing so it has
created a “market of one”. The market of buyers that traditional marketing &
sales (and yes that is what you are currently doing) not only fails to
understand but also in most cases turns away.
The
Four Seasons has been presented to the NEO buyers of today with what they are
looking for, an extraordinary and individualized option that is a one and only
expression of themselves and their personal values. In it’s
absence, they were simply sitting on the sidelines.
