The division with an emphasis on new development is led by new dev marketing vets Louise and Paul Sunshine and will provide developers and financial institutions with an alternative to the traditional sales market.
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Luxury real estate auction house Concierge Auctions has launched a new division to focus on the sale of mid- to high-rise luxury new development condos, the company announced on Wednesday.
The division is led by New York City luxury vet Louise Sunshine and her son, Paul Sunshine, who will team up with the auction house to provide developers and financial institutions with a new alternative to the traditional sales market.
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Chad Roffers | Concierge Auctions
Concierge Auctions is backed by Sotheby’s and Anywhere Real Estate, and partners with agents across the industry to help them arrange real estate auctions for their clients. CEO Chad Roffers said that he first became acquainted with the Sunshines about 20 years ago when they jointly worked on a project for Vornado and, since then, has been looking for more opportunities to collaborate with them. More of a focus on new development condos presented that opportunity.
“Our job is to bring [homesellers and their agents] buyers, expand the pool of buyers and bring urgency when there’s not any urgency,” Roffers told Inman. “And what we know in the luxury space is, [it’s] three to five years typically to sell a high-end asset. And same thing for developers — [there are] very long sales cycles. The key here is that we have a platform with almost one million high-net-worth consumers who have a ferocious appetite for luxury condos and the lifestyle that affords all around the world. We’re active in 46 U.S. states and 35 countries, so we need to bring more inventory to that audience, and that’s where Paul and Louise come in.”
The new division comes as branded condo residences have grown in popularity in recent years, Concierge Auctions said. Branded residence sale highlights have included a $4.592 million unit at The Porsche Tower in Sunny Isles Beach, a $4.48 million unit at Zaha Hadid’s 1000 Museum in Miami and the $20.524 million Regalia Penthouse in Sunny Isles Beach, all of which sold in 40 days or less.
Concierge Auctions has featured some condos on its platform in the past, but those have largely been resales, Roffers told Inman.
Louise Sunshine | Concierge Auctions
The Sunshines have extensive experience in pre-development planning, marketing and sales, including at the Time Warner Center and Trump International Hotel and Tower. In 1986, Louise founded The Sunshine Group which, in the early 2000s, merged with Corcoran Group.
Out of that partnership, Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group was born, the brokerage’s new development marketing arm, at which Louise was named Chairman. In 2006, Louise and Paul created the marketing firm Sunshine Select Worldwide.
Bringing new development condo sales to Concierge Auctions will offer developers and private equity “a whole new way of buying and selling real estate,” Louise Sunshine told Inman. “I think our ability to juxtapose auction with conventional marketing enables a developer to a) save a lot of money, save a lot of marketing money, save a lot of time, and b) it has no risk.”
Paul Sunshine said that the strategy with marketing new development condos on the platform is intended to work in concert with conventional marketing over the course of about a year to a year-and-a-half. Many agents who bring their clients’ properties to Concierge Auctions often end up marketing them separately at the same time.
Paul Sunshine | Concierge Auctions
“It might involve multiple auctions as opposed to just a one-shot deal where we try to sell 50 or 100 units,” Paul told Inman. “This would be something that gets done over time. And the idea and what’s different about it is the ability for the developer or the financial institution … to go back and forth between a conventional marketing program and then punctuate that with an auction event to accelerate the sale of more inventory.”
The continuity between branded residences across cities and even countries also works particularly well with the Concierge Auctions platform, Roffers said, where buyers can feel more confident knowing what they’re buying, even if they opt to do so sight-unseen.
“Our typical customer owns five properties,” Roffers said. “And they genuinely operate and live a global lifestyle. Then when we have branded product, they know, they have a sense of what that brand stands for, and we’re simply connecting them with an opportunity. So rather than having to educate them on what a building is all about, it’s like we’re selling the city — we’re selling Miami, we’re selling New York City, and it happens to be a branded or notable building they can resonate with.”
Louise Sunshine added, “The key word here is ‘exposure.’ In order for a developer to get this kind of exposure to international audiences that are qualified is the thing that they dream about.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of U.S. states and countries Concierge Auctions operates in. The platform is active in 46 U.S. states and 35 countries.
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