From an average home to an ultra-luxury mansion, there are 5 buckets of listings agents can go after. For many of us, the idea of breaking into the luxury niche is intimidating as hell. Agents will wait years to take a higher price point listing, or worse - talk themselves out of opportunities because they don’t think they can go for high net worth sellers. Breaking into luxury is a lot easier than we think. You don’t have to live in a fancy zip code to become an authority in that niche. You don’t have to live in a mansion, drive a Maserati or even be with a luxury brokerage. 

We tend to overthink the luxury niche, but there’s a lot of opportunities for the taking right in front of us. Ultimately, overthinking keeps us on the bench and away from the best opportunities. 

How do we actually define a luxury property - is it anything that’s a $1 million up? What steps can we take to go after luxury? Real estate agent, leader and luxury specialist, Michael La Fido shares how to break through the mindset barriers to selling luxury real estate. 

Quotes 

Generalists get paid, specialists get wealthy. -Michael LaFido

There’s no easy button to break into luxury, but when agents continue to grow their knowledge, their confidence will grow. -Michael LaFido

Key Points  

How to succeed from day 1

It’s hard enough to get started and successful in real estate, even when you’re full time from the jump. What really stands out about Michael is that he started part-time and did really well. Because he had the base income from his day job, he could put extra money towards coaching and marketing, which gave him a huge advantage. 

Defining luxury 

Many people think a luxury property is anything from $1 million up, but markets are so vastly different that what’s considered luxury won’t be the same. Luxury isn’t just in the big pockets and big cities - it’s all over the US. Michael’s definition of luxury is a home that’s 3x the average sale price, and then there’s uber-luxury which is a home that’s 10x the average sales price. 

How to get your first luxury listing 

In luxury listings, trust counts a lot more than experience. For upper price points sellers, their decisions will often be based on a referral. Getting more luxury listings is as simple as getting into that circle of trust and building solid relationships. 

Guest Info

Michael LaFido is a real estate consultant and top-producing Realtor with over twenty years of experience in the real estate industry. Michael’s marketing has been the featured cover story in Crain’s Chicago Business and highlighted in Forbes and FOX News Chicago Business Hour. He is also the author of the books “Luxury Listing Specialist”, “Outside The Box”, and “Marketing Luxury”.

Michael has created the nationally recognized luxury designation for real estate agents which is known as Luxury Listing Specialist (LUXE). This designation establishes an in-depth and detailed set of standards for agents that represent luxury homes and is currently offered for Continuing Education (CE) for real estate agents in Texas and Georgia. The training is based on the same principles Michael outlines in his book, “Luxury Listing Specialist” that he teaches to agents across the world.

For more information, head to https://luxurylistingspecialist.com/ and buy Michael’s books here. 

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