From the wsj.com:
Manuela Manetta went to the Seattle Street Food Festival last month thinking about Afghani naan bread and hot dogs. She came home with a new condo.
While walking through the festival, the 33-year-old squash coach stumbled upon a booth hosted by the sales team for Nexus, a high-rise condo with a daring design that starts construction in November in downtown Seattle. The booth had a lounge area, along with architectural models and video tours with renderings of the building. Ms. Manetta and her partner put down a deposit for a $350,000 one-bedroom unit. “It was completely out of the blue,” says Ms. Manetta, who currently lives in a condo in Seattle’s Belltown district.
In all, seven condos were reserved for pre-sales by the Nexus team over the festival weekend and following Monday, according to the sales team. The building, which will have 374 homes ranging from the low $300,000s to $3 million, is scheduled for completion in mid-2019.
Real-estate developers and brokers are increasingly using food festivals, private dinner parties and other epicurean events to sell high-end homes. The affluent tend to be food enthusiasts with cosmopolitan tastes, they say. Food festivals in particular, which bring together communities, tap into a need for social affiliation that helps sell homes, says Joseph Sirgy, a real-estate professor of marketing at Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business.
“Food and wine is the new golf,” says W. Bryan Byrne, sales director at Palmetto Bluff, a 20,000-acre development in Bluffton, S.C., where homes range from the $800,000s to $6 million; homesites start at $150,000 and can top $2 million.
Read full article here:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-food-festivals-sell-homes-1473948962
The Lexus sales people are to be commended on seven orders from one event. But 2019 is a long ways off.
Let’s examine the body language of the people in the photo above.
The kids are dis-engaged. Bud sign – their fidgeting will make parents leave.
Dad has lost eye contact, and is looking down. He is just waiting for wifey to issue his walking orders.
Mom has some general real estate interest but doesn’t trust this guy – heck, he is wearing sunglasses!
Hey sales guy. Palms up = surrender.
But he talked seven other parties into reserving a spot?
How did you like this quote? I doubt that there are many people who buy their home like this:
the 33-year-old squash coach stumbled upon a booth hosted by the sales team. The booth had a lounge area, along with architectural models and video tours with renderings of the building. Ms. Manetta and her partner put down a deposit for a $350,000 one-bedroom unit. “It was completely out of the blue”
Wow! Yeah, no bubble going on here. Perfectly normal to be walking around looking for food from a truck vendor and decide to purchase a $350,000 1 bedroom condo just on a lark.
Am I missing something!?
How come I don’t have money like that burning a hole in my pockets!? Where are all these rich people getting their dough!? We want to join the party too!