Luxury Real Estate Semantics
As I mentioned last week, I learned a lot at the recent NAR convention in Anaheim, California. You may be surprised to learn that I did not agree with all that I learned.
On a Luxury Real Estate panel, several questions came up from the audience about pricing and open houses. When I had the opportunity to address these questions, I probably did not do a good enough job to put my answer in the context of, “we are agents talking amongst ourselves about best practices in Luxury Real Estate. Therefore, some of the terminology I use here may not be what I would use out in the world on an appointment.” In other words, I used the words ‘comparable’ and ‘open house’ to answer questions that used those very terms.
I heard it suggested to use the word ‘soiree’ instead of open house. Again, you can use whatever word you want except that in talking to actual high-end clients, I would not use ‘open house’.
Consider the words “Exclusive Property Preview” or “Luxury Agent Preview” because neither one connotes the use of a red arrow sign in front of your multi-million dollar listing. Indeed, most of our Preview Events are by invitation only.
The next thing I heard is that we should never use the word “comparable” or “comp” in conversations with luxury clients. Believe me, I understand the importance of semantics in presenting to a client as much as anyone. What I heard though is that high-end sellers don’t really care about comparable market data because they don’t feel that anything is comparable to their property. in other words, it’s not the word ‘comparable’. It’s the concept of doing a CMA and presenting comparable market data that is not necessary.
It was further suggested that the way around this was again to change semantics using the words ‘relevant property’ or ‘recent sales’ instead of comparable.
So if using the words ‘relevant property’ is going to quash the desire for data on the part of luxury sellers, I began to wonder if there would be an even better word we could use.
Since Soiree is French, I asked a friend who is a PhD professor of French grammar at Harvard University what is the French word for comparable. She happened to be having a meeting later that day with visitors from France and took the opportunity to pose this burning question. The answer was l’équivalent. You can try this word in your next CMA and see if it negates the seller’s desire for data.
Wealthy people are smart. You cannot fool them with semantics. I understand that their house is unique, one of a kind and there’s nothing else like it in the world.
What I teach in my class, in my coaching and in my book is that our job is to make the incomparable, comparable. It doesn’t matter what word you use, our job is to make the incomparable, comparable in a quantitative process.
I use the spread sheet that comes with Selling Luxury Homes using the nine elements of comparison (you’ll find it at the bottom of this blogpost). You make the incomparable, comparable by making percentage and/or dollar adjustments between the recent sales or l’équivalent and the subject property.
The goal is to have a process for pricing. People in the high end are numbers oriented. I see a lot of CEOs and CFOs who want to see how the numbers are analyzed. By having a process we can become better and different than our competition. It helps the seller buy into our value range more readily when they see that it came about as a result of a process. We build credibility when we have a process.
This is my take on Semantics and what I leaned at NAR. If you have questions send me an email, Jack@JackCotton.com. You can go to Facebook and click the like button. Don’t forget, if you bought Selling Luxury Homes you get a 20-minute phone consultation with me. Fill out that form and fax it back to reserve your spot. Until next time make it a great week.
