The secrets in the sale of million-dollar houses: paint the lawn or give away a Ferrari

Coloring the lawn of a mansion under construction green to make it “look more pleasant” or giving away a Ferrari are some of the secrets of million-dollar real estate transactions, according to a specialist in buying and selling super-luxury homes, Artur Loginov.

In an interview, the partner and director of Drumelia, who has been re-elected Best Real Estate Agent in Spain at the prestigious European Property Awards in the sector, confesses that these are “good examples” that they are “willing to be very creative to tackle any difficult task” that comes their way.

However, Loginov has specified that they do not always paint the grass to “create the marketing material”, but that it was “a very specific case”, because the house was unfinished and they wanted to give “a good impression of what the final product would be like”.

Marbella boasts of being the city with the most expensive homes in Spain, but selling properties with prices of seven or eight figures is not an easy task.. These million-dollar operations, only suitable for a few wealthy pockets, are in the hands of a small and exclusive club of professionals and real estate agents.

Among them, Loginov himself and the agency of which he is a partner and director, which takes pride in both having sold and having for sale some of these very expensive residences, such is the case of Villa Ricotta, a mansion valued by Forbes at 40 million euros, or Villa Cullinan, sold for 32 million euros.

Behind both operations is this Marbella agency that today has in its portfolio the third most expensive house in the country, Villa Enso, for sale for a whopping 34 million euros, and luxurious mansions such as Las Velas and Villa Hermes, both priced at 16.9 million euros, or Villa Sorrento, valued at 11.5 million.

Show the house but only to a select few

The reality is that most of these properties are not marketed on real estate portals to use, Loginov points out, since many of their owners prefer to “market their homes only to a very select group of potential buyers with the least possible exposure” so “great creativity” is required.

For these “wealthy homeowners who wanted to stay under the radar and not have their home on the internet available for everyone to see,” he says, the “main sales channel used to be word of mouth and a very strong personal network,” but this meant not reaching potential buyers who were looking for high-end properties but not in Marbella.

“Having a high-quality exhibition” and controlling how and to whom the property is shown, “protecting the seller and his home at all times”, has been a significant challenge and to save it they have had to shape commercial proposals with “a very different approach”, says this specialist.

Thus, in order to carry out this type of real estate transaction, they have chosen to have their own marketing department, made up of around thirty people and also awarded as the best in Spain in the latest edition of the European Property Awards.

They create their own sales strategy for each property, highlights the partner and director of Drumelia, although it is always key to include details of the lifestyle associated with each of these villas, already very special in themselves, and show the luxury and glamor that the potential buyer of a premium home in Marbella seeks, such as placing supercars in the garage.

Sometimes they launch special “promotions” such as, for example, giving away a Ferrari when buying a high-end residence. This is precisely the case of Villa Enso, whose sale price includes two brand new sports cars from the legendary Italian car brand.

In the world of luxury there are no easy operations

And in the face of the seller's demands, the buyer's needs, emphasizes Loginov, who stresses that in this type of operation “there are no easy negotiations.”

Here, he recalls the specific case of a sale in one of the most exclusive urbanizations in Europe that would have fallen due to something as apparently insignificant as the depth of the pool. After closing the transaction, the buyer informed them that “he would have canceled the deal if the depth of the pool was less than 1.55 meters,” he says.

In any case, the residential market in Marbella is in top form, although it has undergone some changes after the pandemic, says Loginov, who observes two clearly differentiated but complementary customer profiles.

On the one hand, there is the usual buyer, a middle-aged person who “can afford another lifestyle and who chooses Marbella as a second home to spend between two and six months a year.”

On the other, the younger buyer who often comes from the technology sector and whose presence has increased significantly in the last two years, who is looking for modern houses “in the style of the latest fashion”. He travels, knows and is “increasingly demanding when it comes to the type of qualities he wants”.

And although after the pandemic the investor was looking for larger and more isolated properties where to “breathe”, that trend has been reversed and it has returned to “normality”, where location and meters are sought in equal parts, confirms the partner and director of Drumelia.