Great Expectations

Affluent buyers, according to additional data found in the Ipsos survey, take homeownership very seriously: 65 percent of those sampled engage in their own home repairs; 57 percent garden; 46 percent frequently decorate and re-decorate their homes; and 19 percent engage in gourmet cooking, so even the kitchen will get a healthy workout from a sizable number of affluent-class inhabitants. In fact, when all of the affluent’s spending on home and garden projects is accumulated, it comes out to 11 percent of the group’s $1.6 trillion in total annual spending, or $159.9 billion. For relativity’s sake, that’s larger than the nominal gross domestic products of Luxembourg, Ghana and Uzbekistan combined, and Moore-Moore explained such a level of commitment is inevitably extended to luxury real estate agents.

“The luxury client is not measuring their agent based on the service of other real estate professionals,” Moore-Moore says. “They’re measuring that real estate professional based on the luxury benchmarks of service. ‘How does my Realtor compare to my personal shopper at Neiman or Nordstrom? How did my Realtor’s service compare to the service I got on my last Crystal Cruise or the last time I stayed at the Ritz Carlton?’ They are comparing the Realtor’s service to the very best service delivered by other purveyors of luxury products and services.”

Those standards, Sage explained, are readily apparent in her clients.

“(When) working with high-powered people and people looking for luxury properties, they expect me to be incredibly responsive,” she says. “They are also expecting me to not waste their time.”

Time is often limited for the luxury agent’s clients. Sometimes, Sage may have only one opportunity to show both the husband and wife potential properties, so it is imperative – essential, even – that she has taken the time and effort to study the necessary markets, located the relevant properties and used all of her skills and talents to show them in the best possible light.

In other words, through all of the conversations, all of the showings and all of the individual marketing materials – all of which answer, in a clear, professional and personalized manner, the ambiguous question of “What is luxury?” – Emmert, Moze and Sage show themselves to be agents of competency, the ultimate measure, Moore-Moore says, of a luxury agent’s success.

“(Clients) choose their agents based on their perception of that agent’s competency; it’s not about who you know, it’s what you know,” Moore-Moore says. “(In) research that we did with affluent clients, one of the things that we discovered was no one – not one single respondent – said that they made their decision based on the agent being a friend or a family member. Not one person. It was all about competency, competency, competency.” C.A.

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Jeannie Emmert
Coldwell Banker, Lake Forest
847.987.7600
jeannie.emmert@cbexchange.com

Pamela Sage
Baird & Warner, Gold Coast
312.981.2788
pamela.sage@bairdwarner.com

Lisa Moze
Brush Hill Realtors, Hinsdale
630.712.4706
lisamoze@brushhill.com

Laurie Moore-Moore
Institute For Luxury Home Marketing, Dallas, Texas
214.485.3000
laurie@luxuryhomemarketing.com