Community Marketing & Real Estate

The State of Real Estate at The Landings

If you missed our presentation on November 18, let me share the “top of the trees” of what was covered. I’m certainly happy, as always, to take any questions you have at Raoul@thelandings.com.

Savannah does not have enough “organic” growth or corporate relocation activity to sustain the turnover needed for a 4,200-home community such as The Landings. This is true of many similar master-planned, amenity communities like ours around the Southeast and beyond. Developers, like Branigar, who developed The Landings, create the market through substantial and well-funded marketing outreach to a national audience.

I believe that the team of residents who recognized that we always would need marketing outside of Savannah and took advantage of our Association’s ability to take over The Landings Company in 1998 should forever be commended. Without it, we would not be enjoying the community sales that we have. The Company exists to continue marketing the community and is totally self-funded by revenue derived from the sellers and buyers we work with. Your support with your listings when selling, the choice to use the Company when buying, and your many referrals of friends and family who buy with us are critical to sustaining the sales that fund the marketing to perpetuate even more sales going forward.

Last year, we decided to hire Wyse Advertising to help us further leverage our marketing dollars, and the Club followed by also hiring them this year. We believe this will have a synergistic effect going forward.

After substantial research by talking to residents, members, our agents, and others, Wyse heard a consistent theme that stood out from the many positive comments. Our residents felt that they really just “started living” or flourishing when they moved here. From that, our Start Living and Bylaws campaign was born. The results have been outstanding, as the message is resonating with our target audience.

Web traffic, social media activity, and inquiries are up substantially. Certainly, we all understand that unlike a purchase on Amazon, no one will buy here remotely and without visiting. The number and quality of our Discovery Visit traffic has been excellent this year and is coming from a more diverse geography with results that are following (notice CA and TX, for example, in the map below). This is an important factor as so many of our key feeder markets in the Northeast, for example, are experiencing slower sales, which may hamper those folks from buying and moving here.

 

 

How have Landings home sales performed in 2019 after 2018’s record since 2006?:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And The Landings Company? The chart below represents our sales relative to the total of all homes sold. We performed slightly above these levels of market share for $500k homes and up as well as $750k homes and up as well:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our most significant challenge is continuing to increase our property values. Simply put, it relates to supply and demand, which, in residential real estate, is measured in months of inventory. For my more than 25 years in real estate, six months of inventory was considered to be a supply/demand balance, as neither the buyer nor seller was considered to be advantaged. Over the last two-to-three years, the industry has moved to consider a four-month supply to be balanced.

Although we will have record sales exceeding the peak of 2005/2006, we still exceed a six-month supply, and therein lies the challenge. We must continue to work towards higher levels of efficiencies with our marketing dollars primarily by using our digital platform and will need your support with every listing, purchase, and referral to increase those dollars. That’s the only way we will reach a broader audience, exposing more potential buyers to The Landings and resulting in more sales. We believe once we consistently have a five-month average supply, we will see faster upward momentum on property values.

 

 

As always, we sincerely appreciate all your support each time you choose to list your home, buy your home, and/or refer your friends and family to the Company. With each sale, we increase the marketing dollars we can spend to raise the recognition of The Landings and thus enhance all of our values.

Happy Holidays!

Your Company, The Landings Company!