Community Marketing & Real Estate Update
A record year…what a team!
I hope all of you had a wonderful holiday. We have a lot to be thankful for at The Landings Company.
As I write this article in early December, The Landings Company is experiencing a fantastic year, and I couldn’t be prouder of this team of people I am honored to work with.
A few years ago, I remember an Annual Meeting where I announced we had surpassed $110m in sales, so I am delighted to say our real estate team is having a phenomenal performance in 2019, having already made sales of $165.4m and closing more than $135m in property in just 11 months!
Please understand, all the agents are independent contractors who receive no salary or benefits from the Company. They earn income from closings only and wholeheartedly understand the need for what we do to promote the brand, the community, and the Club. They also live, work, and play here, with 95% being active members of The Landings Club. Ultimately, when making a sale, they’re welcoming a neighbor and perpetuating the future of The Landings.
We have grown our gross profit by 51% since 2013 and have added only ¼ of a staff member since then in the role of Discovery Visit Concierge. We accomplished all this with three fewer staff members than what is widely considered to be real estate’s peak year – 2006. That means that our staff is unbelievably committed and productive.
What are we selling? Every property sale has two sides – the buyer and seller sides. This chart represents how many sides we’ve sold since the peak and where we expect to finish 2019. As you can see, we surpassed 2016 by quite a margin.
We hear a lot of rumors and opinions on this island, don’t we? Sometimes, I hear talk that we have too many agents or they’ve been here too long or, even better, they’re really not selling very much.
Actually, 188 agents from various firms have sold at least one buyer a home or one seller’s home through November of 2019. Sixty-four percent (64%), or nearly two-thirds of that activity, occurred within the Top 35 represented below. The top agent was involved in 35.5 transactions and #35 had five closings in 11 months.
The blue highlights the 29 members of our 35-member team that are within the top 35 of all 188 agents! The other six in red are with six different firms. Ten of the 29 top performers have been added to our team since 2014.
If you were advising someone wanting to list their home, what part of this “tornado of activity” would you suggest they align themselves with -- the 29 working as a team and with 85% of the sales within the top 35, or the six with five different firms?
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 the majority of my 27 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 often exceed a six-month supply, and therein lies the challenge. With 4,200+ existing homes and an aging population, there is no control of the “supply” of homes coming on the market. We can only try to influence demand. 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, which will result 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 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 New Year!
Your Company, The Landings Company!
This article was originally published by The Landings Association on their website. Visit landings.org to read the original article. https://landings.org/news/2019/12/19/community-marketing-real-estate-update
