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Individual condos can be notoriously difficult to position against others, whether in the same or a different building. In season 2, episode 2 of Condo Artist: The Other Side of Real Estate, hosts Uri Vaknin, Shahn Douglas and Mark Bunton help listeners overcome “white box” thinking and show how to differentiate a condo product to attract a specific buyer.
They describe their success with designing limited edition “collections” of condos within a building, and their process for building out these homes, naming them, modeling them, and developing a unique sales and marketing strategy for them. You’ll learn about:
Whether you are developing a new condominium community or taking over sales and marketing from another group, Uri, Shahn and Mark encourage developers and sales and marketing teams to be creative at every step of the process, thinking carefully about your target buyers and how to appeal to their sensibilities.
This episode is brought to you by Juhl Las Vegas, loft-style condos located in the heart of vibrant, downtown Las Vegas. From the low $200s to over $1M. Learn more at JuhlLV.com.
This episode is also brought to you by One Las Vegas, luxury high-rise condos featuring two and three bedroom plus den residences. From the mid $400s to over $1M. Learn more at theonelv.com.
Subscribe to Condo Artist: The Other Side of Real Estate on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts.
TRANSCRIPT
Uri Vaknin 00:00
The key to this is really when you are developing your condos, when you are designing them, really keeping in mind what makes these things unique. How can you call them out to make them special? How do you market them to make them feel different? Where do you market it? Oftentimes, you know, telling stories is really important. And as Shahn is you brought up, great photography.
Uri Vaknin 00:42
Welcome to another episode of Condo Artist: The Other Side of Real Estate. I’m your host Uri Vaknin, a condo sales strategist who has developed and sold out 1000s of condos in Atlanta, Las Vegas, Florida, Detroit, Texas, Nashville and all across the United States. Each week I, along with my co hosts and colleagues Mark Bunton and Shahn Douglas, will bring you the latest insights, best practices and sales techniques to sell out more condos faster no matter the market. At times, we will delve into architecture, design and urban planning, as they pertain to condos and condo living. I am an admitted podcast junkie. But in our search for podcasts about condos, we all realize that there really weren’t any out there. Throughout the series, you will get to know more about me, Shahn and Mark and our 53 years of combined experience in the world of condos. One of the things that has become glaringly obvious to us is that most people, including real estate agents, buyers, architects, and even condo developers don’t fully understand condos, this podcast will pull back the curtain on the world of condos. Welcome to another episode of Condo Artist: The Other Side of Real Estate, today we are going to be discussing differentiating your condo product. What do we mean by that, you know, in in selling condos and developing condos and designing condos and marketing them, you’ve got to be creative, right?
Shahn Douglas 02:18
Right. Because a lot of times people just think it’s just a square box. And they all look the same. And they all feel the same. So it’s really beneficial. And we, as a team, bring out the uniqueness of these condos and market them that way and sell them that way for a higher dollar.
Uri Vaknin 02:35
Right. And when we bought this portfolio of condos, you know, they were built by someone else at a different time. And when we brought him back to market, in many cases, we had to rebuild them, we actually became what I would call say the largest custom condo builders I’ve ever seen. We built them one by one rebuilt them one by one. And you know, this reminds me of when we going back to the Ogden which is a high rise condo building, which was the first condo that we brought to market in downtown Las Vegas, which is I mean, literally in the heart of downtown Las Vegas. And you would think that condos down in the heart of downtown Las Vegas off of Fremont Street like a block off Fremont Street would be a kind of full of studios, one bedrooms and two bedrooms. Nope. These condos were two bedrooms, two and a half bedrooms, three bedrooms and three bedroom dens. And we at first were not attracting the buyers who really wanted such large condos. And so we had to come up with a plan a strategy in order to excite and entice these buyers to come into the building. Because truthfully, we were really the only you know, in downtown Las Vegas, there are four condo buildings, but most of them are come together in the arts district. And we were downtown in the heart of Fremont. Actually, the area is called the Freemont entertainment.. Fremont East entertainment district. And so you know, on people’s searches for condos, this was not on their radar, until what we really had to do was come up with a plan for it. So we did is I took mostly our larger floor plans, mostly on higher floors. And these were beautiful, like condos, beautiful views. But the finishes weren’t that great. And so what we did was we really turned up the volume on the finishes. And we gave them this collection within the building a name a differentiating name that we could use in marketing and advertising. And even the the sales agents could talk about them differently. We did blog posts about them, and we call it them the premier collection at the Ogden and it was a really successful project. In the sense that it people are like, wow, what does this mean and premier question, and it didn’t exactly tie in with how people felt about the building. But what we had already done was totally redo the lobby, which was I like to call it sort of eclectic, elegant, it was beautiful, you could tell what the materials were expensive, but at the same time, it wasn’t staid or stodgy or conservative, it really reflected the true nature of the environment in which the building was in which was in downtown Las Vegas by Fremont Street. And so this premier collection, what we did was we basically rebuilt these condos, we did all the new custom kitchens, quartz countertops, with waterfall edges, we did
Shahn Douglas 05:50
flooring, I mean even in the larger three bedrooms not to interrupt but we even created an extra bedroom. Because up until then remember, we had been selling it as it could be an extra bedroom, but it was really kind of a den, three bedroom plus den. So we recreated that whole floor plan to be a four bedroom, a true four bedroom floor plan, which excited a lot of people and at the time, we didn’t have that many left to sell, which was it was I think, a bonus for us, because the larger homes had been selling for the most part, I think we were down this this premier collection, you know, started probably when we were closer to sell out, you know, when we were upgrading the remaining homes on the higher floors, because they always had a higher price point anyway, and we really needed to bring that higher price point value into the buyers eye.
Uri Vaknin 06:39
Right? And like, how did we market this differently? You know, because we were marketing the building. And we’re really trying to get people to now focus on the larger floor plans. And now I mean, when they were high priced to begin with. But with the additional finishes, they were even more expensive, right?
Shahn Douglas 06:56
We did I mean, we increase the value of these homes, I’d say at least by $75 to $100,000 each. I mean, it was amazing. But it was worth it, because they had the premier views they had premier space. And the way we marketed it was you know, we knew that a lot of locals would like this because at the time, you know, downtown was really starting to thrive. And everybody was coming down to see what was going on restaurants, entertainment. So a lot of our buyers for those homes were local. And we did a really nice, you know, full page ad in our, in the review journal, real estate section, we were also premiered not for lack of better words of premier collection on their, on their website for the million dollar listing. So we really upped the ante with this collection, and marketed it mainly, I think, to our local crowd, but also to California because we knew they wouldn’t even blink at the price of some of these homes. And at the time, just when people were beginning to realize that it was time to get out of California for tax purposes and just the lifestyle. So I think that that’ll bode well for when we launched the premier collection.
Uri Vaknin 08:15
Well, yeah, I think, you know, when people also I’ve just felt like they were getting something special, because they were and so by seeing the premier collection, they felt like they were almost buying a you know, a separate building inside of a building. Right? It was kind of exciting. It’s kind of like the Nomad hotel. And what’s the casino hotel downtown Park, the park MGM which used to be Monte Carlo, but they redid it, they put a you know, a separate boutique hotel inside of the park MGM bigger hotel. And so this was like, having a boutique component to the organ which people actually really loved. And I remember people would talk to me later on. And you know, when I got to meet buyers, they’re like, Oh, well, we bought one of the homes in the Premier section.
Shahn Douglas 09:07
One of the things we were here to discuss today’s is how we, you know, when when do we do it? How do we do it? What are the reasons why we categorize or differentiate these condos? I mean, because the Ogden was one way, that was one thing that we needed to do, right. But we’ve done it in our other properties or communities One Las Vegas, Juhl, but they’ve all had different reasons why we’ve started these collections. So well, you know, go ahead,
Uri Vaknin 09:34
or that ties right into sort of, you know, in our last podcast episode, we talked about the end of the year success. And we we attributed a lot of that success to our release of the pen terraces at jewel, and we gave kind of a sort of a hint as to what the pet pet terraces were last in our last episode, but what we went into We had this really unique product type. I think it’s the only product type of condos that exists like that. And all the Las Vegas, they were they are these two storey lofts that are on the pool deck, they’re not on the top floor, they sit on the pool deck, they have used both interior to the beautiful resort pool deck, which is got incredible landscaping. It’s got a hot tub, it’s got a firepit outdoor kitchens, and obviously the giant pool. And each of these homes have these very large terraces that our like a backyard that are also privately landscaped as well. But they also you know, as there are two floors, they also have views on to the exterior of the building. So these, these terraces have these amazing views both ways. And we really want you to create something special and unique. We didn’t just want to call them to story loss, stuff like that.
Shahn Douglas 11:02
Let me ask you a question. That’s interrupt your train of thought. I know that’s hard, hard to stop sometimes. But don’t you think that we when we branded these or when we you know, made this terminology for them that they started to sell more because they’d been for sale the entire time that we started selling Juhl, but for whatever reason you know, they were almost half a million dollars it was harder to prove the value of you know of this home but for whatever reason, once we branded it penterraces and started marketing it we’re almost sold out.
Uri Vaknin 11:39
Well, I think it’s good to penterraces really bought out the the name itself brought out the uniqueness in the product type. And people realize Wait, there’s nothing else quite like it. And when you explain to people that people would call once a Hey, what’s the pin terrorists a pin towers is a two story, you know, highly upgraded, unfinished home that sits on the pool deck. And they’re only you know, a, there’s a rare amount of these homes. And there’s nothing else quite like it. And they have the finishes of a penthouse. of a penthouse, but yet they are afforded these incredible terraces. So that’s where the name penterrace came from, you know, oddly enough, like, you know, this is not a name that we came up with on our own, we do have to give credit where credit is due. Back in Atlanta, Georgia, when we were all selling with The Marketing Directors, we had a building called Lux and it was on Piedmont Park, and all the homes that sat on top of the parking garage, which they they had used because they were like on the fourth or sixth floor or something like that. And they had these giant terraces and you know, the head of our group, then, um, David Tufts actually came up with that terminology. So it’s always good to know and credit to GA. So but you know, we took that name, and there are no other penterraces in Las Vegas. And people were intrigued by them. And you know, as soon as we released them, we did a virtual open house. And we did some great marketing around them. We also did, we wrote a press release about them. And we had Lee Bryan of Lee Bryan Interior Design, who we’ve talked about, who’s actually been one of our guests on the podcast, did an amazing model of them, it was so beautifully done. And we’ve really focused a lot on the exterior space to show how beautifully you could live, you know, in these terraces and immediately, you know, to sold
Shahn Douglas 13:49
and the photography helped sell it as well. I mean, we have some great you know, evening just when the sun was it prime, yeah, those were
Uri Vaknin 14:00
magical. That was a lot of work because, you know, I kind of went and sort of saw the angles that I wanted to take pictures of were from one of the bedrooms. You had this amazing view of the pool and the tops of the palm trees that surround the pool area. And then from the pool deck, you could see the beautiful like you stood on top of this. Top this planter, you could look down and see you know the entire penterrace or the furniture, the two storey loft space, and our phenomenal photographer
Shahn Douglas 14:35
John Moderano, just want to give him a shout out because you’re right he’s helped us sell a lot of condos in the past several years.
Uri Vaknin 14:43
He like those photos he took. If a God was on his side, like the nighttime it was at dusk, and like the lights were coming on, but it was still, you know, somewhat light outside or getting slightly dark and the sky I think
Shahn Douglas 15:00
and the clouds were white, and it was just
Uri Vaknin 15:05
beautiful. It was it was absolutely perfect. And I think that image alone, you know, sold the pan terrorists,
Shahn Douglas 15:12
because you know, we have that really before we had the interior finishes photographed. So that started our campaign on our social, our paid digital media ads. So yeah, I mean, it all works hand in hand. But again, when we branded it, they came face, it’s sold. So right, this is a not a bad problem, right?
Uri Vaknin 15:35
As we would say, Oh, it was awesome. And the name of it really, you know, highlighted the uniqueness of the product. And that is what was really important in this case. And, you know, you mentioned you know, why did people buy it, so when we had him before, is because we weren’t giving them sort of the name that they were Do you know, and that’s what we really want to highlight in this podcast is really try to be creative. Well, one in everything that you do when it comes to selling condos, but particularly when you’re trying to you tell buyers what your product is all about. And you can do simply by giving it a name like a penterrace, or the Premier Collection.
Shahn Douglas 16:24
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Shahn Douglas 17:16
buyers want to feel like they’ve got something unique and special, right? They want to feel like there’s there’s buyers that like that there’s buyers or like, I got one of the four homes that were even of this style are bright, you know, layout,
Uri Vaknin 17:30
and they can’t just feel that way that it has to be. And in these cases, you know, the premier collection was it was like a boutique building inside of a building. And the pin terraces was, you know, very unique property type that, you know, there’s only a handful of them that around the pool. And once they’re gone, they’re gone. And, you know, I don’t think anyone’s ever going to build something like that again, for a long time. You know, that was built pre recession when money was no object and people built whatever
Shahn Douglas 17:57
130 floor plans in this building, we have no idea what they were really. I mean, we could probably do a collection on, you know, every 20 tranche of homes because we have so many individual unique floor plans here at jewel, it’s just an amazing building to be challenged to market and sell.
Uri Vaknin 18:16
With that brings up to next is our next other unique product type in the building, which are our live workspaces. And while we’ve sold some of them the term live workspaces, just sound so I don’t have a generic or clinical or whatever, it just doesn’t have a great ring to it. And so our next project that we’re going to do is the unveiling of the studio collection,
Shahn Douglas 18:41
creative two story live workspaces,
Uri Vaknin 18:44
right? So the reason why we have to do that is because we also have to be smart about what we do. And we’ve spent years you know, with the term with workspaces, and really creating search engine optimization around that and having when people search, stuff like that, that they are directed to the jewel website. So we don’t want to lose the equity of that. And the amount of work and effort that has gone into getting people to find Juhl based on you know, historically have been called Live workspaces. But that’s just we realize we hate that name. You know, it’s sort of like, shall we always make fun of all these, you know, live work play community.
Shahn Douglas 19:26
Three word campaigns. Yeah. Drink, you know,
Uri Vaknin 19:30
they add the fourth one just to be, you know, provocative. Yeah, that
Shahn Douglas 19:35
was like a thing. I think back in the I don’t know what the early 2000s or something like
Uri Vaknin 19:41
early 2000s, live work play. And so live workspaces feels like something sort of like that. And so what we wanted to do is come up with something that really spoke to what these are, and the studio collection, and you know, one of our residents here, he is a an architect. He lives upstairs, and he has a studio downstairs. Right? Right. And even if we sell to attorneys, you know, attorneys who buy there, they’re buying there because they wouldn’t be cool, you know, courthouse, well, they won’t be close to the courthouse, but they want to be, but they want to be cool with whatever they purchase. That’s why they’re want to also with you to have a space downtown. And so they go, I bought a live workspace. So that sounds like anything cool. But to say I bought, you know, at the studio collection at Juhl, That actually sounds really cool. And I think it really speaks better to what we are actually selling. Because also what happens is, I think some of our buyers, for them have will also be people who actually, you know, individual an artist, or even maybe a doctor who now wants to have a place where kind of almost like a man cave, where he could have a studio, you know, his photography studio or his, his art studio or her art studio or whatever. And so the studio collection really speaks better to the buyer type who’s going to be buying, they’re the kind of product that they would want to say that they bought, instead of saying live workspace, you know, I bought the studio collection at jewel. And so it’s really branding things that make sense to the product type, to the buyer type, and to the feeling that you want to so you want that space to emanate from, you know, I mean, well, let
Shahn Douglas 21:35
me ask you this, is there like a right time? Because I know we’ve kind of rolled these things out differently. But I mean, is there one, you know, rule of thumb, is there a right time to launch these or give us some of your input on you know, how we launched the different. And I know, we really touched on the pen house collection at one Las Vegas, we’ve touched on the premier collection, penterraces and the studio collection. But I mean, they didn’t all roll out. Similarly, they all had their own strategy. And it was very thoughtful and curated. And, you know,
Uri Vaknin 22:10
if we really have to keep in mind is what we’re doing is not what a typical condo developer would do. Because we bought these already built, they they released, we can, you know, instead of being sold or sold at first, or they were all built as condos,
Shahn Douglas 22:29
to kind of reinvent them right kind of
Uri Vaknin 22:32
reimagined them imagined. But we had the we had the liberty of time on our side to do what, what we needed to do. And also to understand how people were going to use them or how people view them. So I think we were very fortunate. But when you are developing brand new, you have to be strategic from the front end, right? You have to start this and begin it from call, figure out what you’re gonna call them from the beginning, and really work it that way. But you can always do a penthouse question. And we’ve always been very successful with that no matter what we do, you know, and
Shahn Douglas 23:13
everybody wants to live on the penthouse floor.
Uri Vaknin 23:17
Well, and we just had this story this week, actually today in one of our sales meetings. And sometimes it’s really great to make these stories, I mean, to make what we talked about real by giving a story. And so we have a buyer who’s looking at our largest penthouse at one Las Vegas is on the 20th floor, which is a top floor. And it’s almost 3000 square feet. And it beautifully upgraded. It’s upgraded, like the premier collection at at the Ogden but even better. And we have the same home and same floor plan on the sixth floor. And this is for it has a strip view. And it is almost half the price of the penthouse collection one. And guess what the buyer said immediately,
Shahn Douglas 24:09
they want the penthouse,
Uri Vaknin 24:11
they want the penthouse, they would be willing to spend almost twice as much money to buy the same floor plan with almost the same finishes on the penthouse floor.
Shahn Douglas 24:23
It’s a higher view. I mean, it’s not you know, people like the status of that, well, it’s
Uri Vaknin 24:28
everything. It’s just the higher view, obviously, but it is the status. And you know, and that’s really something that’s important, because in condo buying, there’s what we call the ego buyer, you know, they’re looking for the best, they want the best and they’ll pay for the best. And it’s not that you know, this penthouse is overpriced because by any means it’s not overpriced compared to other penthouses in the city, and also where these buyers are coming from LA. They would get you know, maybe a two bedroom max for that price point and a building like this and You know, or one bedroom den, for what we’re selling this type house.
Shahn Douglas 25:04
I mean, this penthouse is unreal, it has three separate entrances, you know, I don’t think people understand is just amazing.
Uri Vaknin 25:13
And this guy, you know, it’s got an unbelievable master suite with a walk in closet, that’s the size of a New York apartment. But we also had a and what’s interesting though, in this case, the penthouses were not larger floor plans, then homes and lower floors. And so in this case, we really had to pull out the penthouse collection. And we really had to upgrade these homes to a higher level, because they were the same floor plans. Right.
Shahn Douglas 25:47
But they’re all on the top floor.
Uri Vaknin 25:50
Right? They’re all on the top floor. They’re all in the penthouse floor is Do you remember when we bought the building? There was not even a penthouse. But
Shahn Douglas 25:58
yeah, I was gonna mention that. We definitely we did that at the ogden too
Uri Vaknin 26:02
and yeah, what was weird, it’s like in a play of all places like Las Vegas, you would think that there would be the penthouse but and it’s not that people are being taken for granted, you know, are being ripped off. But spending more money, it’s there is a prestige. So this right? over priced higher anyway,
Shahn Douglas 26:21
they always are.
Uri Vaknin 26:23
Well, you always increase pricing as you go up by four is, but you know, to get it to be able to get it from was half as much on the sixth floor, as opposed to the 24 really speaks to people’s desire to have a penthouse and to live at the top. And these are people who have, you know, they’ve made it in their lives and they want to express it, you know, both to themselves and to other people. And that’s great, you know,
Shahn Douglas 26:49
this podcast is sponsored by One Las Vegas, luxury high rise condos, featuring two and three bedroom plus den residences, starting from the low four hundreds, located on South Las Vegas Boulevard, just minutes from Allegiant Stadium, McCarran International Airport, and the famous Las Vegas Strip. Discover your own private Oasis with unparalleled amenities, including resort Pool and Spa, full service concierge to story, state of the art fitness center, tennis court, dog parks, plus much more, visit us online today at theonelv.com or call us at 702-405-9020. Call one Las Vegas home today.
Uri Vaknin 27:46
Although I will say sometimes we’ve gotten in trouble with you know, promoting the penthouse collections. Because you sometimes in any market, you kind of attract what we call the charlatans.
Shahn Douglas 27:59
So many of those
Uri Vaknin 28:01
I know and it’s you’ve got to really weed them out. You know, when someone says they want to see the penthouse, you know, you got to do your homework and this goes back to marks. Why does it go back to mark when it with your buyer, know your buyer, and exactly know your buyer,
Mark Bunton 28:18
T.I.R.E.
Uri Vaknin 28:19
and tire, what tire Mark because remember, not all of our listeners have listened to every episode. And we hammer this concept home,
Mark Bunton 28:28
tire stands for T for timing, I for investment R for requirement, and E for experience. And the tire processes when we have buyers come into our sales center, we qualify them and we qualify them through asking some natural, but but a series of questions to find out who they are. And you know, what they want answering each of those questions that you know, what is their timing? What is their experience? What is their requirement? And what is what are they looking for? or what have they seen already as far as experience is concerned. And we do have a episode of our podcast here that delves deeply into what that is and how to use it with your own buyers.
Uri Vaknin 29:13
Yeah, until we bring this up a lot because this is a key to selling condominiums. But in this case, when you’ve got something like that a penthouse collection, you really have to do your tire. You know, in some cases, when we, when they’re expensive homes, we actually say in order to view the home, you have to provide proof of funds or pre approval for a mortgage in that amount. And the reason why is because everyone will always want to see your penthouses, right? And so so you don’t waste your time and you don’t waste their time. It’s really important to sometimes do your homework and before you show people the penthouses but we’ve dealt with a lot of Charlotte into, you know, some of them have made up proof of funds, you know, You can almost see it right here, you can see it immediately when the letterhead doesn’t font doesn’t match up with every other font on the on the letter, or whatever. But we’ve also had people go under contract on penthouses with pre approvals. So not to delve too deep into that, but
Shahn Douglas 30:17
that’s another episode, right?
Uri Vaknin 30:21
do an episode on that, you know, that is just the
Shahn Douglas 30:25
condominium.
Uri Vaknin 30:28
I think that was one of our listeners, emailed us and called us our war stories. But you know, but the key to this is really, when you are developing your condos, when you are, you know, designing them really keeping in mind, what makes these things unique? How can you call them out to make them special? How do you market them to make them feel different? Where do you market it? Oftentimes, you know, telling stories is really important. And as Shahn you brought up great photography, we talked about this a lot, you know, if you’re going to go out of your way to call someone the studio collection, you better have some really good photography, that tells the story of the studio collection, or the penterraces. And those images of our penterraces really told the story. And then I would say with our premier collection, what really attracted people were the images of the kitchens, and the bathrooms, and the beautiful flooring, and all that
Shahn Douglas 31:33
well, and then not to interrupt with the penthouse collection, we we unveiled that during the height of COVID. So we knew we had eyeballs on our ads and our website and in our, you know, virtual open houses. I mean, no one had anything, you know, couldn’t do anything else. So the imagery was Pinnacle. I just made me think about that, you know that we did that during the height of the of the COVID. So,
Uri Vaknin 32:02
but what’s interesting, you bring up a really good point was the timing. And this goes back to what you asked earlier, when do you you know, release these things? And do we plan for it? And to the penthouse collection at one, we actually planned for it specifically. And that was based on?
Shahn Douglas 32:21
Well, when we were ready to launch when the homes are.
Mark Bunton 32:25
I think it’s worth mentioning and I can’t remember what we call it. Is that our is it? Do we mention it’s our unique marketing? Selling Proposition?
Shahn Douglas 32:33
Yes.
Mark Bunton 32:34
And I also think it’s worth mentioning that, you know, when we do these, these condo collections, that people can see them and they and one they can see themselves living in these homes. And we do get a lot of empty nesters. And this makes it attractive to them where they might think, Oh, you know, they might think one way about a condominium, which might not be the right way. And when they do see our photos, they do see what we’re offering. It becomes what maybe I can live in this condominium, maybe I can give up this 4000 square foot house and move into this condo and be truly happy. whereas previously, that might not have been a something that they would look at just based on preconceptions or Yeah, perception. Yeah. Right. Right. And and I think that that that pulls people into what it is that we’re doing.
Shahn Douglas 33:28
Well, did we just hear a story from one of the sales agents? Or was it already I think you told it last time where the buyers came in, and they were seeing all these single family homes and they never even thought about living in a condo. And then they went to one Las Vegas and ended up buying, you know, on the first visit because of what they liked.
Uri Vaknin 33:46
Yeah, we talked about that our last episode. And it was, you know, there was the buyer’s agent who kept on hearing what the buyer wanted, and realize that they went It was a condo. But back to your thing about releasing the penthouse collection, we timed with the release of the penthouse collection at the exact same time when the lockdown for COVID in California was lifted, because we knew that California buyers were coming here and literally trying to buy up as much as they could. And they saw value in the Las Vegas market. And so the date literally the date of the lifting of the lockdown in California was when we did our marketing campaign and social media campaign, everything we launched for and we immediately sold one of the penthouse in the penthouse collection,
Shahn Douglas 34:44
virtually,
Uri Vaknin 34:45
we sold it virtually to a buyer from Marina Del Rey, and so that were from California and LA area. So that was you know, going back to, you know, timing things. We obviously had very different than when you’re building something new but We we brought that to market, we had the upgraded homes at that point. But they, you know, to this day, you know, we still have a few homes in the penthouse collection, and people love it. But what the other thing that we need to touch on is, you know, when you do have something like this collection, you need to model it to demonstrate, you know, the, the name you’ve given it, we talked about with the pin terrorists with during the terrorist is with the studio’s collection, we outfitted one with or model that were downstairs, it looks like a really cool kind of Co Op working space. And upstairs is a is a condo. And then for the penthouse collection, you have to do penthouse level furniture. And that’s what a lot of people don’t realize they think, Oh, I could just model it like I would anything else. No, you really have to do furniture that screams, I’m a penthouse. Now and so aspire to penthouse buyer. And right now, you know, the penthouse buyer who’s interested, and what is the largest penthouse at one, the one who did not want the one on the sixth floor, is even considering buying all the furniture, because it screams penthouse. And so that is you know, really the key to to, once you categorize your product type and give it this brand, you have to take it through to all levels, from your marketing, your photography, and imagery and videos, to your interior designer,
Uri Vaknin 36:36
your interior, interior design to everything. So it really has to be a complete package in order to tell this full story. So you know, with that said, you know, this goes all goes back to our concept of being as creative as you possibly can when it comes to marketing and selling condos. And this isn’t just through what we’re talking about with marketing. It’s also with your agents, you have to have your agents be able to tell the story that we have just told right. And so that goes along with a bit of training and explaining to the agents, you know, where the concept came from, why are we doing it? Who does it appeal to what words they should use in in the demonstration and the presentation of these homes, right? With the premier collection. One of the things that was really key for the buyers was using the brand names of each of the product types, whether what kind of make the courts to the Samsung appliance package smart
Shahn Douglas 37:39
appliances, remember that was great.
Uri Vaknin 37:41
Because all smart appliances, the refrigerator has basically like a giant built-in iPad into it,
Shahn Douglas 37:48
doesn’t it text you if there’s like a light on or something if there’s a you know, a dinging of a bell, you get a text,
Uri Vaknin 37:55
a text, you send you an app notification if the refrigerator has been left open. While you’re at the grocery store, it has cameras inside the refrigerator. So you could see what you have in your refrigerator, you can actually have it shipped to you to do let me list for purchasing at the grocery store.
Shahn Douglas 38:15
I mean it we always have fun with demonstrating the Samsung refrigerator.
Uri Vaknin 38:22
Actually, well, they were all Wi Fi enabled, which was really key also to our buyers, because I buyers love the technology. So in the Premier collection, it wasn’t just premiere the finishes, it was also premiere in the technology as well, too. So whatever you you know, all this stuff that you create, it falls flat if your agents are telling the story, right. And so with the pen terraces, it’s really about demonstrating to the buyer how you would live in the home with the terrorists, it’s making the buyer stand there in the bedroom, overlooking the entire pool deck with, you know, with the tops of the palm trees, and really teaching the agents how to bring out the full story of your brand. And so that was really important at each of these properties, whether it was the premier collection, where the sales agents did a spectacular job of making the buyers feel like they were buying a boutique boutique product in this building. And they really felt it because they were and the pen terraces the same thing. And our next challenge is with the studio collection, which I’m really looking forward to as the release of that times perfectly with this, you know, concept of everyone having a home office or working from home. And now people may want to you know, have a much larger working environment at their home. So this is going to be a really fun release. That starts in February. So we will have to report back to our listeners with our success. Today’s episode was on categorizing your condo product creatively. Thank you very much for listening to another episode of Condo Artist: The Other Side of Real Estate.