2005 Top Performer Diaries: May
Even in a Hot Market, Time for New Techniques

Linda Rike and Ed Daughety take a luxury marketing course and get ready to try out new marketing techniques in the hot Carteret County, N.C., market.

Linda Rike and Ed Daughety are a husband-and-wife team and broker-owners of Linda Rike Real Estate in Morehead City, N.C. With their business motto "Just add water to your lifestyle," Rike and Daughety dominated their market with 162 closed transactions and $45.5 million in sales volume in 2004. The couple focuses on Carteret County, which has a population of just more than 60,000.

This has been an exciting and busy past month. We’ve just completed the Certified Luxury Home Marketing Specialist training, a two-day course offered by the Miami (Fla.) Board of REALTORS®. We’ll be able to use some of the marketing techniques we learned right away. For example, we’ve already thought of a home where we can use the tips for staging and shooting photographs at different angles to make our images more dramatic. We also plan to take advantage of some of the marketing materials that the course offers, such as full-color note cards, business card presentation jackets, and gold-embossed seals for letters and presentation packages. The class provided an excellent networking opportunity for us as well. We met brokers and sales associates from Florida, California, Pennsylvania, Colorado, New York, and Washington state.

Unique Homes’ "Elite 2005" edition of the magazine was just delivered. We purchased a full-page ad (pg. 154) and are advertising four of our luxury listings. We hope to get some good exposure through this national ad.

We’ve had a busy month with 20 listing appointments, 70 showings of our listings, and 24 buyers to show around. We had 10 successful closings, 15 offers on properties, and 12 properties that went under contract. We send out 260 relocation packages and 20,737 postcards in the past month. This is half our regular postcard mailing because we knew we were going to be out of town for a week. We don’t like to send cards when we won't be here to take the calls and make the appointments. We’ll catch up on the mailing schedule now that we’re back.

Paige, our buyer’s rep, is working out great. Buyers really like her—so much so that they bring her gifts. She had two closings this month. Margaret, our part-time data-entry pro who also works part-time as a salesperson, also had two closings this month.

Two of our new listings feature beautiful custom homes with acreage and ponds. One has more than 12 acres with an equestrian theme—fenced pastures and horse barn—as well as access to a community club house and pool. The other one has more than five acres, with a custom brick home and a private in-ground pool. There are a lot of buyers coming here from the Northeast looking for acreage and room to spread out.

The spring market is heating up. However, we still continue to have a serious shortage of inventory in all price ranges, especially oceanfront condos. As a result, prices are skyrocketing. Still, we’re ready for summer weather and beachcombers.

Return to main page for 2005 Top Performer Diaries