Jun. 6, 2006 - NY Daily News article about “stories” that help sell apartments

The Daily News ran a fun article (Celebrity owners & intriguing tales always help…) Make A Sale last week in which I was quoted at the start and end. Reporter Lore Croghan did a nice job on an angle that seems obvious to me – as an agent – but she found to be sufficiently ‘not obvious’ to warrant a story. Here is her lead:

“A home is easier to sell if there's a story to tell — whether it's about rock stars or 19th-century architects, or even the seller's happy life.

A catchy tale is an often-used tool for marketing real estate in New York — where the chances that someone famous lived in a building, or designed it, are way better than in some small town in the Midwest.”

She’s got examples in there about celebrity apartments, a townhouse with a ‘spicy past’, and (my angle) a ‘story’ about the family selling that some buyers may relate to. It’s all part of marketing.

Funny thing is, she didn’t use a story she had heard that I thought was one of the best use of a marketing hook I have heard about. She mentioned a 1 BR apartment that was sold to a (30-something?) single woman that had been owned in succession by two single women who sold and moved to larger apartments when they got married. I guess the karma was a good fit for the right buyer!

I spoke to Lore for about an hour when she did her research and I am very happy with the results. (Not everyone has that experience with the press every time, I know.) She quoted me accurately (spelled my name right!) and – I think – intelligently.

Here is my first quote in the piece:

“It [a ‘story’] helps some buyers make an emotional connection to a property," said Sandy Mattingly, an associate broker at Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy.  "You want them to imagine it as a home — then as their home."

And the second and closing quote for the piece:

“You create a parallel between the seller's experiences and the buyer's hopes and dreams," Mattingly explained. "You show a movie of what their life could be."

That attempt to create the parallel is about as good a brief description about how we market apartments as I can come up with, even now, after much reflection. That parallel was a terrific hook for the single-woman-with-aspirations-of-marriage buyer that did not appear in the article, but I think her editor made a mistake with that choice.