Speed to Market Beats the Competition

Villa Ladera Apartments

Fastest Draw in the West... Let's say that you're pitching your brokerage services to the owner of a large investment property. How quickly can you tell the owner that you'll deliver serious bids from knowledgeable buyers? For traditional paper-based brokers, my guess is that a realistic time frame would be 90 to 120 days. But if you're Todd Clarke at NM Apartments Inc., you tell the owner of the Villa Ladera apartments (280-units, Albuquerque, NM) that you can do it in just 40 days. Here's the story.

"We prepared the marketing package as part of the listing presentation and told the client, AIMCO www.aimco.com, that we would be ready to market the property BEFORE the competition could get a listing presentation together. It took us 48 hours to generate an 85-page listing presentation. Within three weeks, we had e-mailed 500 investors, called another 75 VIPS, snail mailed 374 and quick faxed another 100 semi-VIPS."

After receiving signed Confidentiality Agreements, Clarke sent out CD-ROMs containing the complete due diligence package and passwords to the marketing package on the web. Questions? Are there any environmental impact fees? What are the resident demographics? Does the loan have affordability requirements? Check the CD-ROM. It's all there.

Full Disclosure: Clarke can produce this information quickly because he's personally assembled a huge database on New Mexico apartments, including over 100,000 units, 5,000 properties, and 2,000 pictures. Plus, he's a techno wizard and burns his own CDs. Can many brokers replicate Clarke's digital marketing efforts? No way. But almost everybody can use the web to spread the word. So what digital tools do you like best?

--Peter Pike