Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

Sometimes we can see the future but we have no “proof” of what we think is going to happen. When I decided to move from Italy to the US with my family, in the beginning of 2008, I also made the transition from a very successful computer journalist and editor to an entrepreneur dealing in real estate at an international level. I was very lucky to have a wife, Maria, who was completely supportive of me and was ready to go through all the uncertainties and changes in life to make it happen.

I had imagined that the very strong euro to dollar exchange rate and the availability of cash for investment in Europe and particularly Italy would have spurred a whole new industry, connecting the two sides of the Atlantic. I had also envisioned it would have benefited both ends.

The top page of page 15 of the Financial Times dated July 21, 2009

I had no evidence of it except for the couple deals I already made myself from Italy using the capital I had obtained by selling my own home in Milan. But I was confident that my decision couldn’t be too wrong: in a market ridden with foreclosures and bank owned properties, where cash is king and where many local US investors have deserted the playing field, the chance of buying with an upfront discount of at least 20% given by the exchange rate creates big opportunities for those who are brave and competent enough.

(The meeting in Monte Carlo: Daniele introduces the speech by Mark Jackson while I translate)

It was kind of astonishing to me that I could buy a big single family home in Florida for one fourth of the money I got from the sale my house in Milan. And there are houses that cost less that a parking spot in Rome. Yet there were no marketing data that could support my idea: I was developing a brand new niche.

In April of this year I got the first important confirmation of the soundness of my project. In only a couple of weeks, I organized, together with my partner and friend Daniele Bogiatto, a meeting in Monte Carlo amongst European and American investors. It was a success.

But only a couple of weeks ago came the final confirmation. A real estate professional, Michelle Spalding, that I met in Atlanta last June (she was one of the speakers, together with me and Daniele Bogiatto at a real estate bootcamp) told me she had run into a newspaper article that I really needed to see.

The clipping of the article of the Financial Times titled "Falling dollar attracts Italians to properties in the US

She was so kind to keep and send me the original copy: it was actually the Financial Times! Dated July 21, 2009. The title was: “Falling dollar attracts Italians to properties in the US” and it was written by Guy Dinmore, the Rome correspondent for the Financial Times and the Sunday Times. The article is pretty long but I have extracted a few sentences: “Italians bought 14,500 residential properties in the US in the first six months of this year, an increase of 15% over the first half of 2008… Since the 2007, the US has become the prime property market overseas for Italians, after years of dominance by France and then Spain in 2006. The US accounted for 26 per cent of overseas purchases this year”.

So my intuition is now a fact and the business plan we have just refined with Daniele will just dovetails into this amazing trend. There comes a time in life when you need to shed your skin and become a different person, reinvent yourself in business and in life, but keeping the connections that have made you strong before so that they can help you again. You have to follow your hunch even if there is no immediate evidence that it is going to work. Eventually, you can win big. I have won for example one of my best friends ever, Daniele, and I have won a totally new adventure for me and my family.

Roberto Mazzoni