Jim Walberg (Carribean Islands Realty) Ron Seigel (Napa Consultants) Simon Turner (Marquette Turner) Alexandra Seigel (Napa Consultants) Michael Marquette (Marquette Turner) Chris Watson (Marquette Turner)
“The Future is here. It’s just not widely distributed, yet”
--William Gibson, Science Fiction Novelist
Pay close attention to this blog series because we are featuring the luxury real estate marketing model of the future and those companies who are on the leading edge of this very important new wave. We call these superstars of luxury real estate, the Virtual Virtuosos, as they have cracked the code on the virtual real estate office. They are each stars in their own right because they each won prestigious awards at the Who’s Who in Luxury Real Estate conference held last week in Vail, Colorado.
Meet Jim Walberg. He and his wife (and partner) Anne Marie, own Caribbean Islands Realty (their virtual company) and also the most successful real estate team at Keller Williams Realty Danville (California, east of San Francisco Bay) . A couple years ago, Jim and Anne Marie pursued their big dream: owning a real estate firm in the tropics and spending more time there. They purchased this company which included the brick-and-mortar building that housed the office. Eighteen month later they sold the building and went 100% virtual.
The Big Ah-Ha!
Jim and Anne Marie realized that by forging commission agreements with over 30 developers of upscale properties in the Caribbean, they could work “remote-control”. Most of the developers have on-premise, in-house staff that can show the properties to the clients that the Walbergs cultivate as web leads and pre-qualify.
The Walbergs’ big “ah-ha” was a total paradigm shift, a complete deconstruction of the luxury real estate business model. They shifted from listing and showing real estate to being expert LEAD GENERATORS. In the process they cut their overhead to zero and thus, exponentially increased their profit margin. By leveraging the powerful technology of blogging and other content generation methods via social media, plus extensive profession-social networking, Caribbean Islands Realty.com ranks on top of Google searches, naturally, without any pay-per-click advertising expenses.
Last week, Jim Walberg won the award for Best Industry Networking, at the 14th Annual Luxury Real Estate Conference of Who’s Who in Luxury Real Estate. This was an award that was well deserved. We met Jim in the “Luxury Lounge” on luxury realestate.com, the exclusive professional networking arena only for members and affiliates (Napa Consultants International and Luxury Real Estate.com are business partners). We became fast friends with the Walbergs and have started a mastermind of brainstorming virtual virtuosos as Napa Consultants, International is also a 100% virtual company, with partners in all corners of the globe.
In Part 2 of Virtual Virtuosos we will feature the team from Marquette Turner, headquartered in Sidney Australia.
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