From Historic Charm to Modern Luxury: Navigating Diverse Property Markets

 Hello  and welcome to the CreativeViz podcast where we delve into topics related to architecture, development, and visual design. Today I'm really pleased to have Dodie Preston here on the podcast. She is the Director of Creative and Experienced Design with Berkshire Hathaway Home Services and Fox and Roach Realtors. She represents the Mid Atlantic region and today we're going to talk about her role with Berkshire Hathaway, what she's seeing in the markets and,  a few other topics related to marketing and sales and different types of new developments. So with that thank you, Dodie. It's great to see you.

How are you today?

I'm very well. Thank you. Happy to be here.

I'd love to learn a little bit more about your day to day role with Berkshire Hathaway, Fox and Roach. We had talked earlier about how your position lands somewhere between the development teams and the sales teams. How do you position your marketing efforts?

In a nutshell, what does a typical day look like for you?

The B2B and the B2C business one supports the other. So as a business, we're designing things strategically for the agents to be able to promote their business, both as an agent and for each individual home that they sell and advertise.  To the best of their ability and fast and on the go agents are always on the go there seldom working hours that anybody else works holidays, they work and all of that. So it's a, it's a business that needs to support them from wherever they are on the road. So the landscape from whenever I started in this business, I won't, without dating myself, I won't say just exactly how I've in this business, has changed a lot and it's so exciting to be and to see, to be in it and to evolve with it and see what's next. We as Fox and Roach Realtors have a hundred year history. On the upper, North Atlantic areas so we have a lot of clout, a lot of tenure here.  There's a lot of trust built with our name and having Berkshire Hathaway behind us as well is huge.  We can lean on that brand the agents can lean on that brand and we support them with a lot of materials that continue to build that trust.

Right. Is there anything that kind of jumps out recently I'm thinking of, ChatGPT, other AI tools potentially. Is there anything like that? That has been a big change for you and your team?

Well, certainly our marketing development team has jumped on that bandwagon of ChatGPT and helping these agents to, be able to build a description for a home using ChatGPT. We have webinars that are set up and it's amazing how quickly they did that. Our SVP has his finger on the pulse of that at all times, and it's been impressive to see. We're trying to support them in the best way we can with that. Some of them embrace it. Some of them do not, whatever serves them best.

Dodie what kinds of properties are you typically involved in, in marketing? Is it primarily housing? Are there other types of properties you're involved with?

We do have commercial also have a new homes and land development division as well. That rolls under our purview.  It's all very fascinating to watch.

Oh yeah.

 As, you know as an architect, home ownership and home purchasing and the building of a home or the redesign of a home is all emotional. This is where your memories are. We strive to, align whatever we're marketing and to help the agents align with the strategy with a purpose and then design with a strategy. So we align with the purpose of the home getting to know the back story if there is 1. We have loads of historic, deeply historic homes here.

It's amazing.

Those are always fun to walk into whether it's on the page or on the website or physically. So we have those we have urban development, lots of small studio apartments to luxury penthouses and things like that. Then we also have the beach, New Jersey shore, Maryland shore, Delaware shore homes like that, whether they're 2nd homes or they're retirement homes. So we run the gamut.

Yeah. That's great. How much of that would you say is new ground up new development versus existing properties. 

I'm not sure I can give that a percentage.

Oh, okay. 

We don't, as a brokerage, work directly with the developers, but the agents do. So what we define for them as marketing materials is so that they can approach a developer that they have or have not worked with before.

I'm just thinking about the challenge of trying to position a property that doesn't exist if it's still on the boards or under construction you're having to communicate that to a potential buyer. Get them to visualize something that doesn't exist yet.

That can be, that can be really challenging.

That's where a rendering comes in.

Yay.  Yeah.

You're familiar with renderings?

I sure am.

Is that's part of your kit?

It is part of our kit.

Are there things that your buyers are particularly attuned to I'm imagining a scenario where they're looking at a new development versus an existing development in the same neighborhood, what sort of factors might they be considering between the two?

Yeah, that's.

I know that's big.

It depends on how much you want to dive into what affordability is.

Right, right.

Maybe the builder is offering something more in their package of a new home than a home owner can possibly do.

Existing. Yeah.

Although we offer financing. So the agents get more into that.

They get more into that.  For your role, this is where I get fuzzy. So thank you for that. How do you know, the materials that you're putting together, the, the package , the positioning, shall we say the property, how is that different new versus existing or urban properties versus suburban or resort, locations, What are the factors that or the elements that you consider when you're putting together different positioning packages?

Whatever I'm working with, whatever type of product that I'm promoting, whether it's a home or a new development, I'm creating a mood,  I'm creating the story to let them know what the back story is on a historic home or the home.  Maybe it's been lovingly owned by one owner for 45 years and it's been super, super well kept. Or a new development what the future could be in this development, what the builder holds out as their story, there's a storyline to it tap into that to create that feeling for somebody to have a connection that they can see themselves in a home. That’s my goal. So partnering with the marketing team with the agents and knowing their back-story. Even the history of an agent, they might  have history working in certain areas. So they know it very well. They have a legacy there, so they can speak to that as well. And it just, it's creating that mood and it's what works. It's the beauty of it that comes forward of the storyline.

 Absolutely.

Oh, I love that. That's, really interesting. And it truly is personalized to the property. Everyone has their own nuance, right?

Right. So it is customized. We provide the agents with a lot of materials that they can work with. But when we work to customize marketing materials, portfolios, books,  online, everything, literally, it is a custom feel to it because  we're not like any other brokerage out there, we’re not. Our agents are as individual as any other homeowner.

Right. Right.

I, as a creative I never stop thinking about how it can be better. I can go two weeks, two months, two years, come back and go; I wish I would've tweaked that a little bit more. When the agent or the homeowner or the executive when they're happy, when my team has hit that mark of what they hoped this would look like, what this would say, and the design expresses what they hoped to push into the market. That's when we stop.

Yeah.

And then if they think about it 2 days, 2 weeks. They'll come back and say, wait a minute I've rethought that. We always start with a creative brief and the creative brief gives everybody who touches that product whether it's a writer or a designer or it's a social media person, they understand, what needs to push forward, and what needs to be developed, and released.

And then  you're sort of making sure that all these different pieces come together and create something,  bigger than the sum of the parts, right?

Well, we try.

Yeah.

That is the goal. And I will say that we work very hard to hit our mark.

I imagine.

These assets that you're creating, do they have another life beyond the potential  sale?  Do people, keep  the photography or, the story elements that you're talking about  producing? Do they have another life?

I have a 25 year library.

Oh my gosh.

Before I started, the digital library started 25 years ago. So I've been keeping that updated. We have a lot of legacy stuff.

That’s got to be amazing.

Keeping specific notes on properties usually is held with the agent.

Okay.

They have more of it than we do, but I have loads of pictures and images and renderings and all kinds of things. Aerials, you can see put an aerial side the before and after that all that kind of stuff.

Oh my fascinating stuff.

Are there any over that period of time that are outstanding for you? Obviously nothing, confidential or anything like that do you have a favorite? I love to see the changes from Center City, Philadelphia.

Oh, yeah.

clearly, where they've might not even have anything to do with housing, just to see the development of certain areas Avenue of the Arts.

Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Nothing, you know, it's full of theaters and venues and all kinds of things. I do love the luxury homes. They're so elegant. I love reading and filtering in the history of something that started somewhere in the 1700s has been added on to and looking at the architecture and seeing where the original house was on the property. Even tiny little homes that have carriage homes and, little capes, they all have such charm.

 I also wanted to touch on the aspect of affordability. That's going to be, top of mind for a lot of people, particularly with housing. We would  love to hear your thoughts on the challenges that you see. And obviously you're going to portray affordable projects in a very different way than,  a luxury or historic. What are some of those challenges for you?

Well, the affordability aspect has both helped us and hindered us. We're no different in that respect. We are no different than any other brokerage. We do have many things that we can offer clients that are unique to our brokerage, The full gamut of anything that you could want for buying a house, not only with our agents with tenure and how professional they are but title insurance financing, mortgage financing, we offer that as When rates were low and inventory was low, that was a massive impact across the board now that rates are higher and there's still little inventory.

Right.

That's impactful for our bottom line the difficulty that agents are having out there. So we try to support them as best we can.

Yeah.

Are there things that you and I can do or Berkshire Hathaway can do to help the supply problem if that's going to be part of the solution, you know, changing the affordability matrix.

I think with making sure that we treat each individual property with the respect it deserves, moving it forward, you never know who's going to be able to afford. It's not my job to say this luxury house has more emphasis or should take more of my time. That's really all I can offer on that.  Continue doing the best I can.

As the markets are changing as it's becoming more difficult to enter the market, do you feel like other areas within your region urban, suburban, other areas are becoming more attractive to say young buyers trying to enter the market.

You seeing any differences in that way?

It hasn't crossed my Desk in that way. I haven't seen anything like that for our brokerage. Now, we are expanding our focus with commercial a bit and that's been interesting.

What are the challenges then on the commercial side? We're talking what office I imagine?

We  don't do high rise office. We low rise office.

Low rise.

And strip centers. I don't know where the plan is to go in the future so I can't speak to that, but commercial's taking a hit as well.

Absolutely.

I mean, you're at home. I'm at home.  What are you seeing? What's your take on how that is affecting the office market? Are you seeing return to work or are tenants having tougher negotiations as a result.

We're not in the property management side of commercial. We're in the sales part of it. Our particular department has gone back hybrid.  We spent a couple of days a week in office. It's about team collaboration. We still have people in our department who are in other states that can't make that. It's been a blessing to be able to work from home for me, personally and other people that I've spoken with.

It'll be difficult to go back.

Full time in office was very difficult but we get a lot done. Remotely I know people on our team that just don't stop. They just work all the time. Sometimes it's very late nights over here at home.

Yeah we all have them. Of course well let me maybe re ask that question as it relates sales. Some markets are still quite depressed for office space. Are owners are they getting squeezed? Do you feel like there's more perhaps urgency to loading an underperforming property or is there any kind of shakeup, in the market? I'm thinking particularly like in the B and c class that are getting really, really hit right now.

I am curious to see where that lands. I do think that building owners are being squeezed to move property in some way, maybe even to repurpose a property.

Was going to ask you that too.

I'm very curious to see the future of that.  I think it's still new, post-Covid.

There's a lot of talk about urban office, development, older urban office buildings, converting to residential, hotel, other uses. Is that the case for the low rise? Have you seen any kind of inklings of that yet?

I have not seen that yet. I can imagine that in Philadelphia since it does have such an urban, living population, I can imagine that a number of buildings would trade out at least part of their building for housing.

I was talking to somebody, they're talking about urban farming, you know, converting some of these, really under, but well located buildings to completely different use. Getting really creative with all this infrastructure that we suddenly have in our hands.

That serves two things.

Not only for the building for the neighborhood. Farm to table right there.

Absolutely. I like that.

Thank you, Dodie. Is there anything else we should  touch on before, before we wrap things up?

I don't think so.

Terrific thank you again. It's been a pleasure to have you on. Really appreciate your time and joining us today. Thank you so much and take care. 

Scott, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.