TikTokers Filmed Inside A $7 Million Listing. It Sold In Two Weeks.
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TikTokers Filmed Inside A $7 Million Listing. It Sold In Two Weeks.

Real-estate agent Rochelle Atlas Maize planned to market the home using the short-video app.

By Candace Taylor
Mon, Jul 5, 2021 10:33amGrey Clock 4 min

The first time real-estate agent Rochelle Atlas Maize saw Julie Stevens’ home in Santa Monica, Calif., she knew it would be perfect for TikTok. The house had a two-storey waterslide into the swimming pool. In the basement, there was a video production area with a projector screen, lighting and microphones, and a hidden room containing an art studio.

“It just clicked when I went down there,” Ms. Maize said. She remembers thinking, ‘I got to market this to TikTokers.’”

A few months later, Ms. Maize made the house available as a free location for influencers to create social-media content. Within two weeks of hitting the market, the property was in escrow after receiving multiple offers. It closed in May for approx. $6.9 million, just under its latest asking price of approx. $7.09 million.

“It was brilliant,” Ms. Stevens, 54, said of the strategy.

An artist and founder of the BeTini line of low-calorie cocktails, Ms. Stevens had lived in the six-bedroom, contemporary-style house for about 14 years with her two children. She had added a number of features to the home.

NOEL KLEINMAN OF NOEL KLEINMAN REAL ESTATE PHOTOGRAPHY

Her son is a musician, so she built a recording studio for him in the basement. She also set up a projector screen that would show imagery as a backdrop for his music videos, and custom racks to hold lighting and microphones. For her daughter and herself, she created an art studio with a kiln concealed behind a bookcase. And the slide? That was fun for the whole family.

“I think I’m just a giant child at heart,” she said. The slide, which goes from a roof deck atop the garage through a playhouse and into the pool, is “a blast,” she said, adding, “When my kids were young, we were the place to go for playdates.”

Now that her children are older—her daughter recently graduated from college—Ms. Stevens decided to sell the house. She put it on the market in the summer of 2020 with a different agent asking $5.8 million, but there were no takers. After a few months, she called Ms. Maize.

“I had just read a story about how young influencers had been making money and purchasing homes,” Ms. Maize said. When she saw the home’s projector screen, slide and the other features, she hatched a scheme to allow influencers to create content at the house in exchange for using specific hashtags to help advertise the property. “They’ll get it out there to a different audience,” she remembers thinking.

Ms. Stevens liked the idea. “The house already lent itself to those sorts of things,” she said. “To actually put it out there and celebrate it was great, in my mind.” Ironically, she said, her own children had never been that interested in social media.

To prepare the house, Ms. Maize advised Ms. Stevens to make some cosmetic renovations, such as repainting, giving the house “a more neutral vibe.” Then the Stevens’ furniture was removed, and the interior-design firm Vesta redesigned the house with décor intended to appeal to a younger buyer, such as a Chanel surfboard, Ms. Maize said. Ms. Stevens and her family had already moved out at that point, so they didn’t mind, although “it was a little sad.”

“Julie, the owner, was so open to letting me do what I wanted,” Ms. Maize said.

Once the house was camera-ready, social-media influencers could apply to shoot there through the property’s listing website. Ms. Maize had heard of Hype House, where content creators lived together, but she didn’t want to go that far. “I didn’t want a liability factor of destroying the house,” she said. Instead, influencers could apply for a free, two-hour slot at the house, with security on site at all times.

“We had an overwhelming response,” she said, with roughly 60 people applying for a time slot. Of those, Ms. Maize selected 30 based on criteria such how many followers they had. Before shooting at the house, they had to sign a release.

SM6 Band, the family pop-rock band with 2.2 million followers on TikTok, posted footage of themselves dancing and clowning around on the home’s large spiral staircase. TikTok star Hillary Zinks twerked by the pool. On Instagram, influencer Amanda Russo—co-owner of influencer marketing company Babes Who Create—posed in a green-and-white bikini from Copacabana Beachwear.

Ms. Stevens liked the fact that Vesta staged the home’s bar with bottles of BeTini in a rainbow of colours. “It was so fun to see those show up in the social media,” she said.

The plan worked. Once the house went on the market in April for approx A$7.09 million, it received multiple offers and sold quickly. The buyers, a young couple, aren’t influencers but had seen the house on social media and will likely use it to create some social-media content, Ms. Maize said.

Though Ms. Maize’s strategy required a little extra time and effort, “she created a lot of buzz,” Ms. Stevens said. “It was completely worth it.”

Reprinted by permission of The Wall Street Journal, Copyright 2021 Dow Jones & Company. Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Original date of publication: July 1, 2021



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Ray White’s chief economist outlines her predictions for housing market trends in 2024

By Bronwyn Allen
Tue, Nov 28, 2023 2 min

Ray White’s chief economist, Nerida Conisbee says property price growth will continue next year and mortgage holders will need to “survive until 2025” amid expectations of higher interest rates for longer.

Ms Conisbee said strong population growth and a housing supply shortage combatted the impact of rising interest rates in 2023, leading to unusually strong price growth during a rate hiking cycle. The latest CoreLogic data shows home values have increased by more than 10 percent in the year to date in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth. Among the regional markets, price growth has been strongest in regional South Australia with 8.6 percent growth and regional Queensland at 6.9 percent growth.

“As interest rates head close to peak, it is expected that price growth will continue. At this point, housing supply remains extremely low and many people that would be new home buyers are being pushed into the established market,” Ms Conisbee said. “Big jumps in rents are pushing more first home buyers into the market and population growth is continuing to be strong.”

Ms Conisbee said interest rates will be higher for longer due to sticky inflation. “… we are unlikely to see a rate cut until late 2024 or early 2025. This means mortgage holders need to survive until 2025, paying far more on their home loans than they did two years ago.”

Buyers in coastal areas currently have a window of opportunity to take advantage of softer prices, Ms Conisbee said. “Look out for beach house bargains over summer but you need to move quick. In many beachside holiday destinations, we saw a sharp rise in properties for sale and a corresponding fall in prices. This was driven by many pandemic driven holiday home purchases coming back on to the market.”

3 key housing market trends for 2024

Here are three of Ms Conisbee’s predictions for the key housing market trends of 2024.

Luxury apartment market to soar

Ms Conisbee said the types of apartments being built have changed dramatically amid more people choosing to live in apartments longer-term and Australia’s ageing population downsizing. “Demand is increasing for much larger, higher quality, more expensive developments. This has resulted in the most expensive apartments in Australia seeing price increases more than double those of an average priced apartment. This year, fewer apartments being built, growing population and a desire to live in some of Australia’s most sought-after inner urban areas will lead to a boom in luxury apartment demand.”

Homes to become even greener

The rising costs of energy and the health impacts of heat are two new factors driving interest in green homes, Ms Conisbee said. “Having a greener home utilising solar and batteries makes it cheaper to run air conditioning, heaters and pool pumps. We are heading into a particularly hot summer and having homes that are difficult to cool down makes them far more dangerous for the elderly and very young.”

More people living alone

For some time now, long-term social changes such as delayed marriage and an ageing population have led to more people living alone. However, Ms Conisbee points out that the pandemic also showed that many people prefer to live alone for lifestyle reasons. “Shorter term, the pandemic has shown that given the chance, many people prefer to live alone with a record increase in single-person households during the time. This trend may influence housing preferences, with a potential rise in demand for smaller dwellings and properties catering to individuals rather than traditional family units.”

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