Understanding the marketing and sales innovations that grab the attention of luxury high-rise consumers is critical to the success of any developer.
At Elevate, an exclusive event held in Miami Beach in early December, the biggest names in the luxury high-rise space gathered for two days of revealing discussions on the market.
On day two, Matthew Slutsky, vice-president of Livabl, moderated a panel featuring Simon S. Mass, the founder and CEO of The Condo Group of Companies, Jay Parker, the CEO of brokerage, Florida region, for Douglas Ellman Real Estate, and Ed Carey, the founder, and CEO of Audience Town. The panel broke down sales and marketing tactics for luxury homeowners.
Slutsky began by asking the group how to identify the luxury urban consumer. The prototypical wealthy character, dripping in furs, jewels, with a penchant for polo, and holidays in Monaco doesn’t fit the bill. All three agreed that the buyer isn’t immediately identifiable, and they aren’t always in the places one would assume.
What does the luxury urban buyer look like?
Carey broke down the luxury urban audience in a nutshell, based on his firm’s extensive data. Representing seven million households in the United States, these buyers are typically under 55 years old, have children, often own their own business, and work in c-suite and management. They are two times more likely to work in finance, engineering, software, or healthcare. Their interests include working out via outdoor sports such as tennis, golf, or skiing.
Slutsky asked Mass and Parker for their thoughts on the evolving market consumer.
“Florida, in particular, has become a major metropolitan state,” Parker said. “People and businesses are moving here and that was rapidly accelerated during the pandemic. Then we went into a housing shortage and land being what it was, we were forced to build vertically. There are a lot of wealthy people who want to secure real estate right away and are willing to put their money down ahead of time.”
Mass explained that in Toronto, “the cradle to grave time on signing the documents to get the keys in the hand of the resident is about 6.5 years.” He also said that he thinks Toronto’s market is showing some similarities to Miami’s. “We’ve opened an office here in Miami, and I think in the past it used to be a transient place. But the market has changed a lot. In the last two to three years, many of our buyers in Miami have been domestic. I think that’s going to continue, because it’s a great place for people to have an active lifestyle, and that’s what many buyers are looking for.”
Stepping up the marketing game
“Overall, marketing needs to be much more sophisticated,” Mass said. For example, lifestyle and aspirational marketing to the affluent is much more than just focusing on having a gym or a pool in a building; there is nothing special about those things anymore as almost every building, from the lowest priced to the mid-level product, offers the same amenities.”
“I think, especially in Canada, developers will need to really step up their game and follow suit with their U.S. counterparts to add much more on the lifestyle side of things, to allow for the word luxury to actually mean something again.”
