Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

Today I met for the first time with Daniele Bogiatto after three months of separation. We have started our company and activity together here in the States during the summer and then he went back to Italy to develop all kind of projects stemming form what we had planned then and we have been in touch only via Skype or phone.

Now that he is back with his family it has been like starting a new relationship all together, so many things have happened on both sides of the Ocean and so much have we have progressed in meantime towards our initial goals and so much we have added to our initial business model.

We have visited together the first house we have bought together: it was then in horrible shape and today is a beautiful place for a family to live in, completely renovated and ready to sell: we have put in on the market yesterday, just as Daniele was landing at Fort Lauderdale, and we already have two prospective buyers, one of which is international.

It was like for both of resuming a conversation that had been suspended in August. I have been sending videos and updates about the work done, but being into it and “living it” makes it all the difference. We have decided that all the houses that we will rehab with European money will bring a logo from us, a sign to show that we have been there and we have improved a neighborhood and giving a nice place to live in for an American family.

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Daniele and his family have left Florida, they are going back to Italy right now after 3 months. They had more bags than one could account for and Daniele simply told me: “You buy a little her and a little there and before you know it you find yourself with much more you could ever imagine”. There is more meaning in this simple sentence than just chattel. He is going home with a whole new cultural baggage that he was never expecting to collect on his exploratory trip to the USA.

Daniele, Jenny and their kids leaving from Tampa International ariport, headed to London and then Turin.

Now he knows much more about the feelings, the dreams and desires of the people living here because he took the time, with my help, to stay long enough and to immerse deep enough into the North American culture to glean all the major differences that separate it from Europe and that cannot be perceived or understood during short and casual travels and that are definitely hidden by the mass media image that television and Hollywood is broadcasting all over the world.

Having this greater knowledge now he can go back and work from Italy helping me establish our project here with so much more effectiveness. We can bridge the gap and we will be able to do it more and more as we progress on our activities, using also the Web as a magnifying tool and an accelerator.

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It’s time to look at things from the opposite angle as we have always done since the usual “solutions” work less and less and people are longing for someone or something that will carry them into a future that so far has been evading them, and the same people are getting definitely tired of old clichés.

This is the concept that comes to our minds as me and my friend and partner Daniele meet with our families for a farewell dinner before they leave back for Italy. It’s been ten weeks since they first arrived in Florida for a long vacation that opened up many unexpected business opportunities, but that most of all this time frame has consolidated and expanded a friendship that had begun “by chance” in Florence during an event on Internet Marketing in 2007 and that now is the backbone on which we are planning major changes that will affect both the personal lives of our families and the future of our businesses.

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