FORT MYERS, FL - As the bus rolled down Palm Beach Boulevard toward the gleaming condominium towers piercing the sky, Barbara Bengochea Perez issued a warning to the Realtors and the curious that accompanied her.
"Hold on to your seats because this is a design you've never seen in Fort Myers," said Bengochea Perez of Oasis, a pair of 32-story condominium towers located along Palm Beach and the Caloosahatchee River. She's closing sales manager for the project just east of Billy's Creek.
Both she and her 30 traveling companions last Friday were part of the River District Highrise and Arts Tour, which enables people to get a first-hand look at some of the condo towers built in and near downtown Fort Myers over the last few years.
The tower tour has become a monthly affair since its start in 2006. More recently, organizers have paired it with Art Walk, a tour of galleries in the downtown which began in October.
Spurred by the residential market's downward descent, Realtors and developers are employing a host of creative marketing tools to secure buyers.
As things such as price reductions and homeowners association fee waivers have become commonplace, competing developments are now offering such things as in-house financing and targeting foreign shoppers to prime the pump.
And Realtors have turned to such things as focusing on foreclosed homes and special arrangements with developers to boost sales.
Bonita Bay Group has set its sights on the Canadian market and begun several initiatives to attract even more buyers from that nation.
A sharp increase in Canadian buyers, especially from the Toronto area, at the close of 2007 led to focus groups with residents from that country living in the company's five Southwest Florida communities. Their input was used to help create a marketing program specifically targeted for the Toronto-area market.
The company is also co-hosting, with the Royal Bank of Canada, which has branches in Southwest Florida, two events at its communities this month: the RBC Cup golf tournament at Twin Eagles and a resident-referral gathering at the Mediterra Beach Club, both in Naples.
Bonita Bay Group is also working to boost sales from referrals, such as, for the first time, inviting the public to this January's Showcase of Homes and offering luncheons and shopping trips for wives while their husbands play in member-guest golf events at Twin Eagles and Mediterra.
"We just try to capitalize, anytime we know our members are going to bring guests into the communities, to enhance the experience they're going to have," said Jennifer Laderer, the company's director of strategic marketing.
At Hidden Harbor Preserve, where 72 estate homes are planned on a 54-acre waterfront site just southwest of Alico Road in south Fort Myers, the developers are trying to increase the pace of lot sales by making special arrangements with local Realtors.
They are in the process of selecting 10 Realtors who've shown interest in the project, to handle the listing of one lot each in the community.
"We're reaching out to them and saying 'you've shown interest. Would you like to have one of the sites to list,'" said Tony Richardson, broker for Green Earth Realty & Consulting in Fort Myers, which is overseeing sales at the development.
Richardson said studies show that when a Realtor brings an already-interested client to a developer, sales happen 33 percent of the time, the second highest success rate after referrals from happy homeowners in a community, which stand at 66 percent.
"Our strategy is to give the community a jump start and we want to form a lasting relationship with Realtors," he said. "So we thought we'd call them up and give them a site to list. Realtors are the ones who kick a community off."
At the MarinaVillage resort-style, condo-hotel that is part of the sprawling Tarpon Point waterfront development in Cape Coral, ownership can be reduced to bits and pieces.
Rather than sell individual control of units, "we're going to sell it fractionally," said Bob Hensley, chief executive officer and owner of the developer, Grosse Pointe Development. Buyers can purchase up to 12 months in a unit, at a starting price of $74,000. The smallest amount of time, annually, that can be purchased is four weeks.
Hensley said Marina Village was a second or third home for many buyers, so this method provides a more economical alternative to conventional sales.
"This is a smart way to buy because you're only buying what you're going to use," he said.
Since last March, Marc Joseph of Marc Joseph Realty in Fort Myers has been conducting weekly "foreclosure bus" tours around the county for prospective buyers. He said it boils down to, when the going gets tough - the tough get creative.
"It's survival," he said. "Getting the word out and letting people know what you're doing is the only way to survive this market. The old days of order taking, and throwing a dart at a map and making money are long gone. Now, I tell my agents that you're going to work twice as hard and make half as much, and if you want to have market presence, you have to spend advertising dollars to survive. If you are a real estate agent right now, this is survival mode."
The pairing of Art Walk and luxury towers in the River District matches well with the goal of highlighting downtown's entertainment options, said Bengochea-Perez of Oasis.
"We just want to make sure that we tell people that there is a lively downtown that hosts events that benefit the community," she said.
The River District tours are the brainchild of a roundtable of condo-tower developers who want to highlight each community's offerings and the appeal of downtown Fort Myers.
"You can actually live, work and play in downtown, is what we're trying to bring across," said Bengochea-Perez. "....It's about time we got back to basics. We have to hang together. We're selling many different products and we want to showcase them in the individual uniqueness that each one has."
Source: News-Press.com