Top 5 Ways to Break Into the Luxury Market with Anthony Marguleas

So, the key, yeah. How long take it to hit our stride? I mean, it took a good couple years to really get comfortable in that marketplace. I think the key is, is really knowing your data and knowing your, like, the average median, average price, median price, the cost per square foot. Also, it's really important, if you want to break into a higher price point chance, to go to as many open houses as possible. I know there's not that many open houses now with COVID, but really just to get educated on what is happening in the luxury market. And know it as well as your current market. So, when you get that call to have a listing appointment on a property that may be a million-dollar listing, maybe it's a $2 million listing, you're going to be a lot more comfortable. Also, like, going to the open houses, you can see how some of these agents, how they show the house.

You can look at their collateral material. You can look at maybe what they do differently, what you can learn from, what you can maybe improve upon. So, it's just really good doing your due diligence and really being educated. And one thing we did, which was really, it helped a lot. I don't know if a lot of your listeners have teams or not, or if they're growing their team. But we changed the title of our buyer's agents to sales partners. And it was really a game changer, especially if you want to break into the luxury market. Because when you are trying to refer out, if you're a team leader, and you're trying to refer out a high-end buyer, and you go, here's my buyer's agent, as opposed to here's my sales partner, it has a completely different intentionality, and the way the client perceives it, plus the way your buyer's agent's going to feel, well, I'm a sales partner.

So, I think it's really important how you're labeling your team members. It's way more than just semantics, right? It's just, it's the impression that everybody's going to take from that. 100%. Yeah, great. All right, so do we want to jump into our Top 5 for today? Yeah, let's do it. All right. Tip number one, what you got? First, you got to look the part. So, we talked about that. Everything from your business card, you know, you may think your business card's not that important, but if you're going to go out to the luxury market, try and get the thickest business card you can. It'd be like a piece of wood. The thicker, the better. You want someone to look at it and go, wow, you just gave me six cards. No, no, it's my one card. You want it to show class. You want it to ideally be elegant and simple.

I'm not a huge fan of having pictures on the cards, but if that's done in your marketplace, go for it. I just think simple and elegant is really the way to go. I think it really, really helps. And the thing about upgrading. I mean, is your car nice enough to take around a million or $2 million client? If it's not, you may want to think about, you know, we used to do this quite a bit, is you rent out a car, you know, a nice black SUV, hire a driver, they take you around when you're going out with your clients. Just a very good first impression. So, look the part, own it. And a lot of it just comes down to confidence. And you get that confidence by tip number two. That's knowing your luxury market. So, it's so, so important. If I asked you or if another, if a client asked you, you know, tell me what the top 10% of, where are the top 10% of homes in your area?

You need to know them. You need to know how long they're on the market for. You need to know everything about them. You know, who are the buyers for those homes? Are they doctors, lawyers, investment bankers? Are they athletes? And just really dive deep into that market. So, you're pulling data from, obviously, you know, places like the MLS. But also, where else are you getting those insights? Yeah, it's a great question. So, I was like, I like having fun trying to take and keep getting a more expensive, more expensive listing so you can test out your marketing materials. Meaning, like, if in your marketplace, the average price is $500,000, but you want to break into the million-dollar home market, and you go, wow, there's a couple of really cool things I've seen that I really want to test out, that's really the time to do it.

For example, we started doing the virtual marketing books. I'm blanking the word on it, but it's like your listing presentation, right? Yeah, listing presentation. So, it's a video book. And, you know, a lot of people go, wow, those are expensive, and I don't know if I want to do it. You can get them down to about $30 a piece, and you open it up, and it's literally a computer marketing about either yourself or about that property, and it's a game changer. Everyone else is bringing a one-page flyer or maybe a glossy brochure, and you walk into a listing appointment with the video book, completely different, completely different game changer. I still have your old, the ones you did before that, the leather-bound, you know, looked like a hardcover book. I still have a copy of it sitting right over here that I still show people.

I'm like, this is the coolest thing. Yeah, and you're like two beyond that now. Yeah, two generations. So, what you're referring to is that's the binding machine in-house, and it's a hardback, and you can create your own. They're really easy to do, and people are really impressed with it just because you're setting yourself a little bit different than a lot of your competition. Other things that are kind of cool, you know, not just knowing your luxury market, but really being involved in a lot of luxury designations. So, there's several of them out there, and just really being, taking the next step up. So, to give you an example, I went to Harvard Business School for a weekend class on advanced negotiating, and I did that.

So, my higher-end clients would be like, wow, okay, you went to Harvard Business School. Right. You can't take it online. You know, well, now they might because of COVID. But at the time, you actually had to fly out there and, you know, go to Boston and actually take the seminar. So, it's just important to distinguish yourself because your clientele most likely is going to be a little bit more sophisticated. So, you have to rise to that level. Right. That makes sense. All right. So, that's got us through looking the part, knowing your stuff. Yeah. Knowing your stuff is important. So, yeah. And the seminars, yeah, the seminars, just so there's the luxury home marketing designation. That's a great one. Lori Moore-Moore had run it, and I think she sold it to another individual.

But it's a great way to really get out there and separate yourself on the luxury marketplace. They've got some cool tools in the background, too, that you can use, right? They have some great ones. Yeah. Yeah, they really do. So, that's good. And then another one, writing articles in your local paper and online. And that's easy to do. I actually got that idea from Luxury Home Marketing. Basically, take the most expensive home in your marketplace that's sold or that's on the market. It doesn't have to be your listing. Write an article about it. So, one of my agents, and you're going to laugh when I say this, there was a billion-dollar listing, a billion with a B, in our marketplace.

It wasn't really a home. It was like land. It was like several hundred acres of land in Beverly Hills. So, one of my agents wrote an article about it, got it published in our local paper. She posted it on social media, and she got all these people congratulating her on thinking they sold at home. Yes. So, I'm telling you, anything you can do to leverage, write articles in local paper, write articles about new trends in the luxury market, how porcelain tile is really popular now, how home theaters are popular, cigar rooms are popular. Whatever you can think of that would really generate you as the expert in the luxury home market, that's what you really want to do.

And so, you've got to really align yourself with the local, you know, could be the local real estate blog or the local real estate paper or Inman News or whatever the local real estate publication is that you can get into. I just recommend working that relationship. Awesome. All right. So, that takes us to our next bullet point, which is? Next bullet point. From memory, no. Let's see. Sponsoring or attending luxury events. So, in our area, for example, there's golf tournaments, a lot of charity events around the golf course. See if you can sponsor one of those. We also sponsor a polo event every year. You can sponsor car shows.

Wine events are good. The polo one was really good for us. And it just, you know, if there's a, if you're near the water and there's maybe a marina or a yacht club, you know, try and join the yacht club. Or if there's private beach clubs, try and join the private beach clubs. Wherever you can associate yourself with people with means that you can be seen as an equal with them, it's really important to do. We love getting involved in charity boards, Chance. So, if there's a charity that you're really into, if you can get involved in that board, it's a fantastic way to meet people that usually have means. I think it's a great way. And we do, we do a lot of charitable giving. And so, that kind of helps align with our core values of our team.

Yeah. Not a lot of charitable giving. Y'all give a ton of money to charity. Over a million dollars, right? Yeah. We give a decent amount. Yeah. It's so, I mean, it's so impressive what y'all have done with that. You know, we've started a foundation here and we're building towards that. But we look at y'all and we're like, holy cow, over a million dollars into the community. That's just fantastic, man. Yeah. Well, thank you. No, I know. I hear what you're doing and it's very impressive. I mean, everyone does, whether it's putting in time or money or resources, you know, whatever we can do to make the world better. So, that's why we're all here. You know, I think one of the things that we often take for granted as agents and, you know, I talk about it, I specifically talk about it when we're doing our new hire orientations at our brokerage.

But I try to bring it up often enough because I don't think we do enough of this as practitioners is really just sit back and think about the responsibility that we have in protecting and procuring really a huge chunk of what is the American dream, right? And so, I just think that that's an awesome responsibility and I think that we owe it to the communities that we serve to ensure their vibrancy for years to come. 100%. The only way to do that is to get involved. Yeah. California just became this year a renter state. First time in the history of California, there's more renters than homeowners. And the biggest fear is exactly what you said. A lot of these people, whether they're policemen or whether they're teachers, they retired because of the equity in their homes.

And if they're not homeowners now, they're not going to have that equity. So, I 100%, I couldn't agree more with that. Yeah. No, we – Yeah. So, you know, one of the interesting things about that, and we're totally getting off topic, but I don't care because it's good conversation. But one of the interesting things about that was when we were trying to figure out kind of the direction we wanted our charitable giving to go, the reality was we started pulling the thread on what you just said, which is if most people's wealth is wrapped up in their home, then why don't people buy homes? And we went to NAR, we have an amazing organization here in Texas called the Texas A&M Real Estate Center, and we went to them, and we started asking, and the truth of the matter is they've studied homeownership nine ways to Sunday, but they haven't really studied the people who don't buy homes.

And so, fortunately, Texas A&M Real Estate Center was able to give us some data, but really that's kind of been, as far as our charitable giving here at the brokerage, has been the direction we've gone in is how do we help at-risk kids reach their full potential? So that they go out, they get jobs, and they break these generational poverty cycles, and are able to achieve more. Yeah. And it's really, a lot of it's passive income. You buy your first property, if you're younger, and you rent it out, and in 30 years, it'll be free and clear. Right. So, it's just real estate, you know, we're all big, big believers in it. And then next thing you know, you're moving to Pacific Palisades and buying a home for me. That's right. Yeah. And just as a parting note, I mean, just as a, I was like giving, you know, a little kind of a game plan for people wanting to break in.

Just set a goal of doing 20% higher price property. So, everyone's into units, right? They go, okay, I did 50 units, or I did 100 units, or I did whatever the number of units, and they try and increase their units. They can increase their average sales price, they're going to get such a higher return on that investment. So, just to be intentional about it, say, look, if my average sales price is $500,000, next year I want it to be $600,000. Next year after that, I want it to be $720,000. And just slowly work your way up. I think there's a lot of huge rewards in doing so. Because you have mentioned it before, I've heard you, when you're speaking, that it's actually a far easier group of people to work with. Right?

Much easier. Yeah. There's a misconception that people with money are going to be a lot more difficult. Most of them are going to be all cash. Most of them don't need to get a loan. Most of them, for the most part, are going to be pretty much easier to work with, as opposed to first-time homebuyers. And, you know, on the super high end, you're going to deal with business managers, and probably an attorney, and some additional handlers. So, that's a little different set of challenges, but in general, people with a lot of money, they're going to respect you and your time and what you do. And, yeah, just because they're more sophisticated. Right. Yeah. Right. Great. Anything else you want to share? No, that's it. All right. Yeah. So, if somebody needed, if somebody had a referral out, how would they get hold of Anthony and his team at Amalfi Estates?

Our website. Thank you for asking. So, it's amalfiestates.com. It's like the Amalfi Coast in Italy. So, it's A-M-A-L-F-I and then estates, E-S-T-A-T-E-S.com. Okay. Awesome. Well, thank you for being on the show today, Anthony. We appreciate it. This is great stuff for anybody looking to break into the luxury marketplace. Thank you for taking the time to watch, and I hope that you'll be able to take these tips, put them in your business, and have a long-term, successful career here in real estate. So, have a great day, and we'll see you next time on Top 5. We'll see you next time on Top 5.