I've been asked to prepare a marketing plan for a multi-million-dollar property ($4-5M) in Palo Alto, California.

It's not so much a luxury home as it is an unusually large lot on one of the prime blocks in Old Palo Alto.

I have content for the plan but in the spirit of leaving no stone unturned, I wanted to solicit ideas from this group.

I did try searching the website here but didn't come up with much.

Thank you in advance for your time.

Dan

Hey listen I don't no much about marketing but I love to research large homes expensive homes you need to think like a millionaire some one with $5M to spend most likely won't shop craigslist think Wall Street Journal ads & golf courses/county clubs or check out sites like luxuryportfolio.com you will figure some thing out. Good Luck!

Door knocking. Let the neighbors help select their new neighbors. Birds of a feather flock together. If that does not work, I have had luck with an ad in the "Dandy Dime" or "Thrifty Nickle".

In marketing higher end homes-
The standard marketing done for other homes including- professional floor plan drawn up for hand outs/ full color brochures/ broker tours are important, as well as calling other realtors with properties similar to yours, since they will have pools of comparable buyers, with a large lot/ architects and contractor mail out- /
I put one in Dupont magazine. It cost thousands of dollars but I ended up procurring the buyer as well and double ended the multi million dollar sale. I wouldn't recommend that kind of expense for all properties but I saw it as a way to also market myself and it paid off well.

A nice package for interested parties. You'll be able to expose the highlights and wonderful marketing efforts as well as possibly put it in the hands of a neighbor that will be impressed with your efforts.

I'd go to broker tour this week on comparable properties and pick up the marketing pieces available. You might see some great marketing pieces you can duplicate. Good luck!

How about finding a local charity and doing an OPEN House/ Charity benefit where you offer a free meal in exchange for donations to the charity and offer to give a portion of your commission to the charity and maybe get your broker to match it. This can be real powerful if you can find a charity near and dear to the owner's hearts.

Another option is a Lobster dinner brokers' open house with fancy formal invites and the whole nine yards. You can have it on April 1st and just buy a bunch of big stuffed or plastic lobsters to put all over the house and serve seafood salad subs from subway or something.... It is a great April Fools joke and a good gimmick to get folks in the door.

Gimmicks might get them in the door but a CORRECT LISTING PRICE dictates the sale.

High-end property takes a lot of money to get exposure in those circles. All buyers want a deal so you have to be sure the sellers will list realistically to sell before shelling out a ton of dough marketing it.

If it's an old home in fair to rough shape you might market it as a teardown and rebuild where the value is in the lot. Does it have any views? For instance a developer or builder could tear the old house down and have an architect design the new home around the view.

If you just have a lot and not a home is it in a commercial or transitional area ?

You have to define the properties highest and best use today and in the future and build a marketing plan around that.

Good Luck

Many thanks to everyone for sharing their thoughts.

In response to super realtor's questions: There is an attractive house (4BD/3BA, 2800 SF) in good condition on the property but the main value is the 36,000 SF lot. It is a very stable residential neighborhood, Old Palo Alto, with views only of the other multi-million-dollar properties.

Has anyone had any experience, one way or the other, with LuxuryRealEstate.com? Is it worth the investment?

What about listing the property on ebay, mainly as a way of generating publicity?

As far as pricing the listing correctly, my thinking is to have a formal appraisal done, prior to setting the listing price.

Dan

Dan, look at it this way: whatever marketing efforts you make to sell this house is also marketing you. And now you will have something in your portfolio for when more high-end listings come your way (and by having one of this stature, you will also be getting interested buyers). For us here, the usual marketing (featured realtor, trulia, zillow) has worked fairly well. Good luck.

WOW, that is funny, sounds like a plan I would come up with. I would eat the seafood salad from Subway though, its quite tasty actually. It would be entertaining to see the reaction of the other agents!

In my area a 900K house is VERY high end. I went to a party last summer hosted by a Broker who had the house listed.

He invited agents, clients, encouraged agents to invite their clients, you just had to RSVP. He hired caterers to go the cooking (Hamburgers, Brats, hotdogs) and side dishes. He had a small bar set up but also encouraged you to BYOB and chairs. To keep people out of the house he had 4 port-o-pots on site. For clean up he hired (donated money to the pack)a pack of Boy Scouts to walk around and pick up litter.

Everyone registered upon arrivial. You signed up for the walk through of the residence, tours were conducted every 1/2 hour and limited to 10 people at a time. No food or drink allowed inside the residense. Tickets were given for drawings for those that took the tour.

He got the house sold soon after. Not sure if the party had anything to do with it? I would attend another one of his Broker Opens though.

You can team up with a lender that sponsors the broker tour and caters it or splits catering with you -

On a property like this , besides the floor plan/measurements being done by vendor for you, I'd research with the city what could be done in developing the property. If the value is in the larger lot and it's potential, this will be important info.

On larger high end properties, I sometimes enlist assistance ( a couple of warm bodies ) to keep property belongings secure, ask as host/hostess..

I have also done "pre market" open house and it was invitation only. We had great food, harp, it was around sundown and the property had some beautiful ocean views and was a new complete remodel that showed beautifully at night. This didn't result in the sale but it created a "buzz" around the property, it gave the owner an opportunity to show off his most recent project to his invited guests, etc.".

When you have more value in land and it's development vs. the house, you're sometimes mainly selling the "sizzle" and opportunity. I'd be careful to still present the house well because someone could walk in looking for the "today house" with the dream potential of down the road development.

The luxury estate sites online look good to the clients but most are a waste of time but we do it all to please clients.