← Estate of Mind — The Art of Selling Luxury Real Estate
Estate of Mind — The Art of Selling Luxury Real Estate
Storytelling as a Tool for Real Estate Success
00:43:11
In this episode we focus on leveraging storytelling to elevate real estate marketing, particularly in the luxury market. Storytelling helps real estate professionals highlight the lifestyle a property offers rather than just its physical features like bedrooms and lot size. The affluent often buy into a lifestyle, making it crucial to present properties in a way that captures their unique essence and surroundings. Our hosts emphasize creativity and mindfulness when using imagery, videos, and thoughtful language to create emotional connections with potential buyers, demonstrating that selling real estate is about offering more than a house—it's about selling a lifestyle. By focusing on lifestyle, creativity, and authenticity, storytelling transforms marketing into a powerful tool that resonates with buyers, fostering emotional connections and making properties truly unforgettable.
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- [00:00]
Tammy Sims
Foreign welcome to A State of Mind, a podcast series all about motivating, inspiring and educating you in the art of selling luxury real estate. The podcast is brought to you by the Institute for Luxury Home Marketing. I'm Tammy Sims, lead trainer for the Institute and and a full time real estate professional in St. Petersburg, Florida for more than 20 years. In this episode we're going to explore storytelling to enhance real estate marketing. Today's podcast is brought to you in part by Real Marketing, the only marketing firm recommended exclusively by the Institute. Real marketing utilizes over 25 years of expertise and their products are built and customized for you to dominate any neighborhood anywhere. Go to realmarketing4you.com that's realmarketing, the number4you.com and also look for past A State of Mind episodes with CEO David Collins as our guest. I'm here again today with my co host Jack Miller, a 25 plus year veteran luxury agent with onward real estate in the greater Nashville, Tennessee market. Jack, it's great to see you as always.
- [01:21]
Jack Miller
Hi Tammy, good to see you too.
- [01:24]
Tammy Sims
So today we want to focus on the art of storytelling as an effective way to approach marketing high end homes and as we say in the institute's training the affluent by lifestyle, much more so than just brick and mortar. Do you agree with that, Jack?
- [01:43]
Jack Miller
Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of times as listing brokers in all levels of the industry, we focus way too much on, on the features and on the, on the house and the property and oftentimes don't think about the lifestyle piece. And when you talk about the luxury market, the lifestyle piece is as critical as the, as the features. And really when you think about the brick and mortar, as you put it, when you think about, you know, number of bedrooms and bathrooms and lot sizes and all those sorts of things, that's really just minimum criteria. It's the way that we establish searches. But at the end of the day, nobody falls in love with a search. You know, they fall in love with, with a, with a property based on the presentation. And so when you focus on the features of the house, that's kind of the baseline, the minimum criteria to make sure that your search is properly captured by all the platforms out there. But then taking it to the next level and talking about the lifestyle, that's where people fall in love with the property and that's what we need to focus on and that's what we're talking about today.
- [02:53]
Tammy Sims
So when we talk about lifestyle, there's lots of different things that come into play there. Different Types of property. I know you and I have talked a lot about that, whether it's urban, rooftop living and waterfront. Like, you have totally different type of waterfront than I have in my market. Talk about some of the other types of lifestyle that a property can represent.
- [03:20]
Jack Miller
Well, we definitely have the, you know, the city living and the urban lifestyle as part of that rooftop living. That's a big deal on our market, and that's a big deal. I think in a lot of markets, we have farms and what we call gentlemen farms. We've talked about that some in the past on this same podcast. That's become particularly popular here in Williamson county, which is a suburb of Nashville. And it's become very popular in a lot of the suburbs of Nashville, particularly with buyers, I think, since COVID who are wanting to have that escape creating family compounds and wanted to have that peace and that quiet lifestyle near a big city, but not in a big city. And I'm finding that more and more, our buyers who are navigating their way to the Nashville market from other parts of the country are absolutely looking for that type of lifestyle. So, yeah, the gentleman's farms, golf course communities, that's certainly a lifestyle. There's lots of different aspects. Walkability, proximity, proximity to things near the home that you purchase. So, again, we're not just selling the, as you said earlier, the brick and mortar. We're selling what's all around us, the entire picture, not just the house.
- [04:33]
Tammy Sims
Absolutely. And. And we can go. We could drill down really far on different types of lifestyle. There could be wine enthusiasts, automobile enthusiasts, you know, and that's a combination between the house and. And. And other surroundings that we're talking about.
- [04:48]
Jack Miller
Equestrian.
- [04:49]
Tammy Sims
Yeah. But in most cases, as you said, realtors are focused just on the regular specifications of the house on the property. Now, you've told me that you routinely try to sell the lifestyle of a property, and I do, too. But let's talk about some of the directions we can take here. Right. We got photography and videography. We've got actual showing techniques, broker event ideas, and copywriting. I know we're going to talk about that a little bit later, both for MLS and for brochures. But let's start with photography and videography. Right. The imagery, if you will. So, Jack, tell me some of the ways that you captured the essence of a place or a lifestyle.
- [05:31]
Jack Miller
So one of the things we like to do, I think more and more we're seeing agents who incorporate drone photography as a routine portion of their marketing, you know, doing, whether it's Video or still photography, trying to capture again, you know, if it's a gentleman's farm or a farm, for example, obviously you want to see that big piece like how does the property lay out compared to other properties? So that's, that's a real obvious way to use it. But even on your urban properties, oftentimes we'll use drone photography. So we can capture either a video or a still photo and show here's the subject property. But more importantly, look at all the things in close proximity. Here's the proximity. You can see the downtown skyline in the distance. You can see upscale retail district only a matter of blocks away. You can see coffee shops and restaurants or perhaps it's universities or medical centers. Things that would appeal. If we have a property and we think it's going to have a strong appeal to physicians, we might want to highlight where is the nearest hospitals to this particular property. So yeah, the drone photography is a big part of it. Another thing with Tim we've started to do, and I suggest they started it, we just doing it more often now, but we've done it for years, is we're incorporating photographic images and videos from our clients. So instead of just using the professional photography that we bring to the table, oftentimes our clients, because you know, we sell a property in our market, we're selling a four season market. And that's one of the things people oftentimes will. One of the reasons people like Nashville, we have four distinct seasons. And contrasted with fear market where you have the most beautiful season year round.
- [07:11]
Tammy Sims
Except for a couple of days a year. Yeah, we do typically wear shorts on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
- [07:15]
Jack Miller
That's right. So we, so we have to really focus on, okay, we have four seasons and if we happen to be in that perhaps the more harsher, the harsher season of the four. And we're selling in January and February. What's really nice to have imagery from our clients that shows, hey, what does our property look like in the spring? What does our property look like in the fall or in the summer when we're having get togethers with family and friends and we'll pull those photos together. What does the sunset look like here? What does the sunrise look like from our property? What does it look like when you see wild turkey and horses running across the farm? These are all images I can't depend on capturing in a four or five hour photo session. But the client who's been there for five or ten years has a, has a plethora of photos from their albums that oftentimes help tell the whole story and create the lifestyle.
- [08:05]
Tammy Sims
And I have found that they absolutely love it when you use their favorite photos. Yeah, right. Of, of those special moments. Now the, the wild turkey, I can't say, but yesterday I did show a million dollar property and chicken running in the yard across the street. Right. But I'm not going to put that in the.
- [08:23]
Jack Miller
Why did the chicken cross the street?
- [08:27]
Tammy Sims
I have no idea. Right. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. But, but you're right about capturing the, the seasonality and, and things that aren't necessarily in, in play when you're actually shooting the professional photos. And you and I have talked before about in various neighborhoods and that sort of thing periodically just capt with our professional photographers capturing imagery of the neighborhoods or the area at certain times of year so that we can incorporate that in our property marketing at any time. But you mentioned the using aerial photography or videography to show proximity. We do a lot of work with waterfront properties, navigable waterfront properties. And so we want to show the access to the waterways that will take out to the Gulf of Mexico or to the bayou where they want to go fishing. But you gave me a great idea when we were talking ahead of this podcast and that is thinking about photography from the, the, the perspective of being on the boat. So not up high, but on the boat approaching the property as if you were living there and you were, you were docking the boat and, and I thought that that was a, a fantastic idea. And, and I can't wait for that. And I sell a lot of downtown condos and homes in nearby neighborhoods. So I use a lot of aerial imagery to show property that is close to some of those assets, whether it's the waterfront parks or the, the, the downtown, just like you were mentioning, it's, it's really a big part of the, of, of the overall approach.
- [10:19]
Jack Miller
You know, one thing Tammy, I've noticed too, pardon me, is that when you're talking about the urban properties like that, one of the things that I've seen a lot, not just with, in our own marketing, but I've seen a lot of my colleagues who do an exceptional job with marketing. You know, the more urban properties, the high rise condos, more and more agents are doing nighttime photography because when you think about downtown Nashville, the nightlife is what speaks to people. And it's interesting because if you've ever, you know, and this is probably true of any market, but if you've ever seen the CMA Awards broadcast live from Nashville, if you've seen a Titans game or Predators Hockey game or something like that. They almost always have as part of the promo that when they bring the production on, they'll have nighttime imagery, drone video as they come in closer to downtown. And there's something about that type of video and imagery that makes a downtown come to life. It's so exciting to see a condo from the air as you're coming closer to it. It just. It just. The screen is so exciting. I know when we watch the New Year's Eve, when it was filmed live from Nashville, broadcast on abc, that it just looks so exciting downtown national, way more than it does when you're just walking down the street. So I think oftentimes when you do that type of imagery again, you're capturing the energy of the city. That's a really hard thing to capture. Just walking down the street, shooting a picture of the lobby or the parking garage or the, you know, the. The workout facilities or whatever aspect of that condo, you. You can capture that in a new way. I think that's what we're really after here.
- [12:05]
Tammy Sims
Excuse me. Well, I held that off just as long as I could for Jack to finish his sentence.
- [12:14]
Jack Miller
You all right? Yes, sorry I went on so long.
- [12:20]
Tammy Sims
No, no, that's not. That's all right. I kept it.
- [12:24]
Jack Miller
Alrighty.
- [12:25]
Tammy Sims
Jack, you're absolutely right. And while you were describing that, I was thinking about in my town, we have the Firestone Grand Prix. Right now, it's not at night, but we have an internationally broadcast auto racing event, right, the IndyCar auto racing. And they send international news networks and there's helicopters everywhere and all of that. And they are showing these amazing, you know, really moving images of our downtown, of all of the mega yachts that are parked there, the team owners and that sort of thing, and the vibrancy. That really is amazing. And for our city, we often think about the value of the Grand Prix in that international exposure for our waterfront downtown that is so unique. And so this reminds me that if we just take cues from other media outlets and other events, that we can have an understanding of those lifestyle features and those. Those things that. That really are appealing about, about our various markets. Yours in Nashville, mine in St. Petersburg, any of our listeners in the areas that they. That they're located in, you know, pay attention to those other things and that'll give us some clues. Now, you also.
- [13:54]
Jack Miller
Oh, pardon me. Go ahead. I wanted to say I saw a really wonderful Instagram video that one of my colleagues here posted, and it was basically just taking an iPhone and pointing it out the window of A car and they were driving down a country road and they were videoing an old fence, an old farm fence going down the road and you're seeing cattle and horses and the fence. You're driving by slowly and you could just feel where you were. And I mentioned a previous podcast we sold. I sold my first barndominium this past year. It was a six million dollar property on a couple hundred acres. And the listing broker on that property did an amazing job, as he always does on with this type of imagery. He does a full featured video from his ATV and you have a combination of bumping around, bumping along on a path through the woods and you just feel like you're there. And, and they'll take imagery of creeks and streams and very quiet moments and you paste all that together with, with the livestock and the wild animals and all these sorts of things. Pictures of barns and the rolls, you know, the hay bales and that sort of thing. And you really get a sense of what that lifestyle is. And again, you're, you're, you're falling in love with that lifestyle. Of course, you know how many bedrooms and bathrooms, square footage it has. That's the starting point. So that's what we're talking about, capturing energy. It's the opposite of the downtown energy, but it's still got an energy of its own. So it's really, it's exciting.
- [15:27]
Tammy Sims
Exactly. And though it's going to be two different buyers that those experiences, those lifestyles are going to appeal to. But it's a perfect segue because you and I have talked about some of the communities that are being built that really are kind of like small towns in and of themselves, and that becomes part of the marketing. So talk about how you market properties in those areas.
- [15:52]
Jack Miller
We have a property or community rather here in the Nashville area. It's in Williamson county, which is part of my market area called West Haven. And West Haven is one of the largest neighborhoods in the state of Tennessee. Luxury community. It's got a golf course, as you would expect. And it's located in a very rural area of Franklin, but not all that far from downtown. The historic square.
- [16:17]
Tammy Sims
It is lovely.
- [16:18]
Jack Miller
Oh, it is, it's beautiful. The square of downtown. Downtown Franklin Square is absolutely beautiful. And people fall in love with that all to its own. So that's always a part of the marketing. I would say if anybody's marketing anything in Williamson county, that's typically part of it. But when you look at West Haven as a community, it's a large community. And when people are Selling homes. When our colleagues are selling homes in that or marketing homes in that neighborhood, they definitely don't feature just the house because it's all about walkability and proximity to things you can get to without ever getting in your car. So there's sidewalks on both sides of the streets. All the homes have porches on the front, all the garages are alley entrances on the back. And within a very short distance of any particular property, you're going to find the community has its own fire station, police department and its own school. There's a grocery store, a pharmacy, a real estate office. The whole retail district, it's actually part of the community. And a lot of folks will ride around in golf carts and go visit neighbors and biking from here to there. And it's just a, that's the life you're, it's a high density community, but that's the lifestyle you're selling is that everything's close by. You don't have to really get in a car to go anywhere.
- [17:31]
Tammy Sims
That's right. And now we've used the words proximity and walkability. And you and I had this discussion when we were preparing for this, that when we're talking about equal opportunity, that we need to be careful about using terms like walkability because that excludes folks that are differently abled that, that that may not be able to walk. And so for our professional colleagues out there, maybe using, focusing on proximity, the how close something is or you know, I love that you just said there's sidewalks on both sides. Right. Because that means that it is easily traversable by someone who's using alternate means besides walking. So for our listeners out there, we just want to be, be mindful of that. And you know, we're talking about accessibility from a proximity. Right. Things are super close by. You can get to everywhere you need. But we want to be careful with the words that we, that we choose because our industry of course tries to be inclusive for all of those things.
- [18:41]
Jack Miller
Yeah. And the other part of that, Tammy too, we've talked about, you know, you have, we see a lot of real estate brokers across the country who will use these lifestyle professionally produced videos of a property. And I think that's really cool. They tend to be pricey. At least in our market they are. We've got wonderful opportunities here in Nashville with having professional video producers who also do work in our industry. But then you ask the question, well, who do we feature in this video? You know, what demographics? Is it male or female? Is it women? I mean, excuse me, male, female, Is it? Is what race? You know, these are all questions. You have to be very careful as we tread putting something like that together. And that, and that's for me, that's why I have often focused on trying to collect video and photos from my clients and they're presented that way. So when we look at the images that pop up on the MLS or if you're looking at Zillow or Trulia or Redfin or realtor.com or whatever platform someone happens to be using or own proprietary websites, and if it shows pictures of the family cookout, I'll say in the description of the photo, you know, photos provided by the seller of their family cookout or blah, blah, blah. So it's not me bringing in models saying, here's who we're trying to find to buy this house. It's me showing here's some wonderful experiences at this property that the seller has provided.
- [20:03]
Tammy Sims
Absolutely. But I'm super glad you brought that up because I want to talk next about videography and particularly about the elevation from just walkthrough videos that we see in almost every price point to what's referred to as the mini movie, which often does have characters or actors in it and really is kind of telling a story that speaks to the lifestyle. And so I know you've talked about the videos of being on the atv, right. And the, you know, or the, I love the image I saw in my mind clearly that fence that you were describing going along out your, your car window. And I've had clients that have shared with me photos of their, their kids on, you know, water skiing and things out off the back of the house. And I've shared them in the same way that you have. But, but that mini movie concept is, is a really effective way to tell a story and it creates a buzz. But you want it to be in good taste, right? You sure you shared with me the first one that, that came to your attention. Tell our listeners about that one briefly.
- [21:24]
Jack Miller
The one from Australia.
- [21:26]
Tammy Sims
That's right. And when I say briefly, that's tongue in cheek because.
- [21:29]
Jack Miller
Yeah, Jack, keyword brief. We. The first time I saw a professional movie day, it was years ago. It was, it was a brand new technology, but there was a luxury broker out of Australia promoting a property. And it showed a woman and a man in bed in the morning when the alarm goes off and he gets up and he walks all over the home and there's no talking. There's just pictures of him walking from the bed to the kitchen to the gym outside in the pool, walking to the mailbox. He's all over the property. But the thing is, it's in black and white. It has a very upscale kind of feel to it. But he's naked, he doesn't have any clothes on. He's always filmed from the back. And it was, but the point of the video was at the end, the broker comes in and he, and hands the keys off to the broker. And the broker says the only words basically at the closing, saying, you know, it's so quiet that you'll not see any neighbors anywhere on the property. And that was the, that was the image they're promoting, that it's upscale, completely private. But it was, it was really walking that fine line. But it got the message across.
- [22:34]
Tammy Sims
Absolutely. And, and I think that's what really started the craze is those mini movies that were super edgy, right. And you can scale that down to have some great lifestyle mini movies that, number one aren't big budget, right. Because you can spend a lot of money, especially in your market, hiring those kinds of professionals. But to really convey the lifestyle, that isn't such a shocker, right?
- [23:05]
Jack Miller
Tell our listeners about you share with me one time a story about a colleague or someone you had met at one of the conferences had done a video in San Francisco. Is that where it was?
- [23:17]
Tammy Sims
That's right. It was the San Francisco area. And it was a member of the institute who shared that their company was sponsoring some pride activities in their area. And they also were launching a listing in a nearby neighborhood that they really thought was not going to be the, the go to for a young family with kids. There were only two bedrooms, there were a lot of different levels so there would be separation between the area. And they decided to do a mini movie that, that allowed them to, to have something for the pride activities and, and also was appropriate for the house. And they hired, they hired two very well known local drag queens who narrated the tour of the home, inviting you in right from the, from the front door. And, and they were bantering back and forth and I remember quite plainly in the kitchen, one of them was talking about these amazing appliances in the kitchen that you would just absolutely love to cook in. And the other said, dear, the only thing that you can make is reservations. Right. And so it was entirely tongue in cheek. And I don't think that this was designed to necessarily be the marketing tool for the property, but more so in conjunction with the activities that were going on. But ultimately the buyers of the property, who absolutely were a young couple with children Right. The totally opposite demographic there. They had seen the movie because it had the buzz, and that's what drew them their attention to the house. That may not have been in their specific. Specific criteria in the MLS search that you were talking about, but.
- [25:07]
Jack Miller
No, but that's. This is a really good point. This. And this is what's so difficult about our business. There are lots of listings out there. There's an infinite number of things to look at online. It's very hard to break through the noise and have someone focus on your property. And so the first thing that comes to mind in both those scenarios we described is those are the types of things that have a viral component to it. I mean, the video I talked about, I saw it. Gosh, I know it was close to 15 years ago. It was a long time ago, but you still remember because it was so edgy and so different. I was kind of shocked. But I have not forgotten that property to this day because of how well it was, how well it was done. And you're describing something more on the campy side, but very funny. But that's the kind of thing where somebody would say, hey, have you seen this video? Have you seen this? You know, and they're passing it around, so to speak. So, you know, we always have to be very careful when we're. We're doing things that are a little bit on the edgy side. I tend to shy away from it a little bit. Right. Luxury market. But at the same time, there's a time and a place where you can really draw attention to your property that I know there was back when the market crash and part properties were so hard to move in our market. I remember, you know, commonly you see someone use sign writers that say pool in ground pool, you know, course or whatever.
- [26:26]
Tammy Sims
Please not the one that says, honey, stop the car.
- [26:28]
Jack Miller
No, honey. Honey. Yeah. That's so trite. But no. There was an agent who put. And she was a really conservative agent in a marketplace, and she. She put sexy pool as the rider on the side. And. And I was like, why in the world would she use that? But everybody stopped and looked, and someone shot it and put it in the local paper and started making the rounds. The sexy Pool. And they started talking about it because the market was very slow, and she Dr. Eyes to that property, you know, so it's like, wow, you know, so there's a way you can do it, but you've got to be very, you know, obviously cautious about what you do.
- [27:01]
Tammy Sims
And. And so let me give you an example of One of our members who did the mini movie approach in a way that, that, that. That was not edgy or campy. So this property was in the Seattle area and the agent wanted to do something along the lines of a mini movie to show all the. The various. This was a great house for entertain. And so she asked the owners to host a cookout and invite a dozen or so of their friends who would be willing to be captured on video that was going to be shown to the public. And so they had a videographer there filming the whole thing. They were cooking and making drinks in the kitchen. There were some of them that were shooting pool in the billiards room downstairs. There was lots of great enjoyment. And this particular approach allowed for an incredibly diverse group of individuals. So as we talk about the sensitivity to the audience. So here are all these friends enjoying this great party. And then as the sun begins to set, they move out to the backyard and they sit around the fire pit and they toast with their glasses as the sun sets over Puget. It sound. Right? That is storytelling. That is selling the lifestyle. And, and so it, it also really gives us an opportunity to demonstrate how that mini movie principle can. Can be leveraged. Right. But there's lots of things to think about, as you said, both the good taste and, you know, ethnic sensitivity and all of that sort of thing.
- [28:53]
Jack Miller
So what about. We haven't talked about copy yet. As far as describing properties, what in your market, how would you rate the agents in your market as far as copywriting in the luxury market?
- [29:06]
Tammy Sims
Well, I think in order to not get in trouble with my colleagues in my market, I think I would like to rate the industry as a whole.
- [29:13]
Jack Miller
How about that even? Well, you. And you have a good experience with the industry as a whole because you travel to so many markets. So what are you seeing?
- [29:20]
Tammy Sims
So if I had a dollar for every time that I read marketing copy that talked about the kitchen boasting granite counters, I would be wealthy. Right? But you think about it and we write things in our descriptions that you would never ever say out loud if you were physically showing the property. Right? And if you think about that and you take a step back and then you read the things that you've written, you will realize that perhaps there needs to be a little more authenticity. But I think the opportunity to have a more conversational approach, an authentic approach to it, of things that really describe the lifestyle, tell the story, but are in a real voice. I know you use the terms cliches, right? So I want you to talk about the things that you see. And then, of course, you can. You can identify copy that was written by AI in a heartbeat. And. And then, you know, one of the things that you talked about was the desire for our marketing copy to be colorful but real. So tell me your thoughts about that.
- [30:39]
Jack Miller
Exactly. I mean, can you imagine having friends or family over and having drinks in your new home and inviting them in and saying, look at my kitchen. It's an entertainer's dream. You know, I can't. Can't imagine anybody ever saying that or saying, have you seen my chef's kitchen? It's the most beautiful chef's kitchen. Nobody speaks like this. And so, you know, one of the hallmarks I think, of a really good writer and certainly a really good copywriter is, as you said, speaking away. It's authentic. And if you look at. When you. When you read. When you read any sort of expose, you know that people, writers try to avoid cliches and realtors, my goodness, we're the world's worst. Somebody sees something. How many. How many homes are flooded with light? They're all flooded with light, you know, and the reality is all homes are not flooded with light. I've got a kitchen in the middle of my house. It is not flooded with light. I've been 100 kitchens just like it, and they'll say flooded with light. And no, it's not. So not only is it cliche, but it's not even accurate. So I think, you know, I think every home, I think, has some wonderful features that we need to translate into lifestyle and. And talk about it in an authentic way. I think is really important. And the reality is some of us that's. That's not our gifts. Okay? So we all know we've all got things that we're really good at, and some of us are really good at writing copy, and some of us struggle just to spell the words correctly. And fortunately, we have tools that fix the spelling. Right. So that covers almost everybody. Correct spelling and grammar, even. I think most MLS platforms pretty much do that for you. But if you're not good at copywriting, I would highly recommend, you know, bring in some additional resources to do that for you. And. And you mentioned AI. You know, I had a new agent recently. I think I shared this with a new agent recently, had brought her first listing, and it was. It was a pretty much a luxury listing. It was a very first listing, so good for her. But she wanted me to review it for her, and it had every cliche possible in the copy. And, you know, I was Trying to be diplomatic in giving her a review. And I said, I really think you should take another look at the copy that you've written because it's full of cliches. And she said, oh, I didn't write this. I said, you didn't? Who wrote this? She said, oh, my, My broker actually wrote the copy for this using AI And I said, well, you need to take it back to the broker and let's start over. Because it just, there was nothing about, it was authentic. It just felt so canned, you know, it just felt really canned.
- [33:19]
Tammy Sims
And, you know, that makes me think of the fact, you know, that AI is only as good as the instructions that you give it.
- [33:25]
Jack Miller
That's right.
- [33:26]
Tammy Sims
And when we talk about, we as an industry have a lot to improve on. If you ask AI to give you a, a real estate listing description of a property with these attributes, it is going to pull from all of the years of catalogs of our poorly written cliches, right? It's doing what you've asked it to do. And so when we talk about resources, I think AI is a fabulous tool and a great, a great way to start there. But always checking it for accuracy, right? Because as you said, not every kitchen is flooded with light and so making sure that that's accurate. But I also, that if we move away from those real estate inspired sources, right? So think about telling AI to write a description of this property that isn't a real estate listing, right? Maybe tell it to go in the opposite direction or think about engaging freelance journalists, right. With what's happened in the media industry. There are an awful lot of extremely talented writers out there who are doing an awful lot of freelance work. You've got journalism students. Anybody who hasn't already acquired the bad habits of our industry in terms of description, I think there's lots of ways that you can, that you can reach out, but definitely moving away from the norm, right? And so when you talk about the chef's kitchen, the gourmet kitchen, I often think about paying attention to magazines, high end magazines that are maybe showcasing new kitchen designs, right? Or an interior designer or whatnot. They don't have a picture of an empty kitchen like we do in our real estate. They have a photograph of a kitchen with a pot of something that, you know is delicious on the stove. There's some vegetables. There's some, you know, there's some things and it makes you want to lean in, Forgive that cliche. But to, to smell what's in the pot, right? And to, you know, to, to to really stand, step in that kitchen and experience it. And so that's the kind of emotion that we want to invoke with the storytelling in our. In our copywriting. And. And. And I think that's maybe where our industry may be missing the mark. But one other thing that I want to talk about in the time that we have left is utilizing all of. All of these concepts that we've talked about. Imagery, videography, that sort of thing, and the. The copy. Let's talk about how you can physically show a property using these same techniques. Right. You told me about seeing a property where they. They actually took ATV tours on the property.
- [36:24]
Jack Miller
Yeah, yeah, that was. It was very interesting because, again, a real credit to the listing broker. He specializes in that type of property in our market, that's pretty much all he sells are rural properties with lots of acreage. And he will show up for the listing appointment with a trailer behind his truck with the ATV on it, prepared to give a full tour. So he is truly embrace that type of property, knows how to show it. So I remember the. The first time we looked at a particular property here in the Nashville area was actually north of town, and it was a cold day. And he got us on the ATV and he closed the doors, turned the heater on, so we had heat inside the atv, which is a nice way to show it. It's kind of misty, rainy day. We took off through the woods. And he was. I'm. I'm convinced he was creating trails, not riding trails, because I was seeing no trail. We're bumping across logs and going through the W woods. And my clients loved it because that's what they were looking for. That's exactly experience. And we come, we're heading toward a creek. All of a sudden he stops. He goes, oh, no. Oh, no. We got a tree down. And so we. This is the funniest thing. So we get out. The. The. The husband and I, my buyer, he and I get out with the broker to try to move this big tree that had just fallen across the path. And we moved it and went back and forth, couldn't get it to move. And so I pretty much assumed the tour was over. But no, the listing broker says, wait, wait, we're good. Hold on a second. He runs back to the atv, ATV whips out a chainsaw, comes back with a chainsaw. Seriously, he cuts the tree into pieces, we throw the pieces out of the way, and off we go. I mean, and the. And my client. Oh, my goodness. It was. It checked every box. He had that ATV tour the property. He was ready to write a contract literally before we got off the property because he, that agent sold the experience in real time.
- [38:18]
Tammy Sims
Oh my goodness.
- [38:19]
Jack Miller
Yeah, yeah.
- [38:21]
Tammy Sims
Well, and I'll tell you that the person looking for the, you know, the pampered, you know, butler service kind of property is not going to be interested in that one. But vice versa. So again, that storytelling, even when you're on site and in my market, showing properties by boat is something that is, that is not out of the ordinary and really shows off the attributes of the house, the lifestyle of the house, and gives you a great opportunity to show neighborhoods, entire neighborhoods by boat. Right. Because in my market there is an awful lot of backyard living. Right. So people can see examples of different pools and landscaping. And you know what came to mind? Some of our colleagues in the institute work in very, very high end markets. Right. And so if you're thinking of that, that urban high rise that has a helipad, wouldn't it be something to pick up your clients at the regional airport and take them to the property, avoiding all of the traffic and land them on the helipad? Right. Quite honestly, that probably only costs a couple of hundred dollars, but what an impression it would make. And if you had that kind of client and that kind of property that, that was looking for, that, that would be absolutely spectacular. Right. So absolutely everything is scalable. Right. Based on your price point and your, your, your areas.
- [39:56]
Jack Miller
Yeah, we, we had a, we talked water. You know, we don't, we don't have the ocean here. We have lakes, lakes and riverfront properties and we have a lot of luxury property on the water here, as you would expect. And one of the things I've seen again, some of our colleagues do here that specialize in waterfront properties is they'll show the home and the estate and then they'll go and they'll have their boat at the dock, go out to the private dock, get on the boat and they'll take them over to a marina for drinks or for lunch, you know, which, interestingly enough, it might be a five, seven minute trip across the lake to this really wonderful marina where all the yachts are docked and that sort of thing. But if you were to drive from that property to that same marina, it can take almost an hour to get there. But you can just jot across the.
- [40:39]
Tammy Sims
Lake and be, oh my goodness, that's a great example.
- [40:42]
Jack Miller
Somebody like, oh, wow. Because, you know, it's, it's a different animal in our market. We're going for different parts of the lake, which are in five different counties on the same lake.
- [40:52]
Tammy Sims
Wow, that is an excellent example and that is really being thoughtful about that. The things that are the story of the property so much more than how many beds and baths and, you know, square footage and all of that. And now I know that we could go on for hours on this topic and maybe this will spawn some ideas for some other podcasts where we drill down on. On specific avenues of this. But I'm afraid that, that we are, we are running out of time for this episode. So is there any last thing that you want to add, Jack? Any we haven't covered?
- [41:31]
Jack Miller
No, I think the key word that I heard today came from you, which is we've used many times in prior podcasts, is authentic.
- [41:40]
Tammy Sims
Right.
- [41:41]
Jack Miller
I think if that's the word, we could apply that to our imagery. Our storytelling is. Is to be authentic. We've used that a lot talking about who we, who we are as brokers in the way that we communicate. And I think it certainly applies when we're storytelling. That's what makes the difference, I think, between a good real estate broker and a great real estate broker.
- [42:06]
Tammy Sims
That's right. Providing exceptional service through that authenticity. I'm so glad that you, that you brought that to the light. So, Jack, I look forward to our our next episode together. But for now, I want to thank all of our audience for joining us on this episode of Estate of Mind, the Art of Selling Luxury Real Estate. If you're interested in learning more about the Institute, you can find out more@luxuryhome marketing.com and if you like what you just heard, please share it with a friend. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review this podcast. If you've got a hot topic that you'd like us to discuss in a future podcast, feel free to let us know. Send an email to info at luxury home marketing.com thanks so much for listening.