Condo Sales Marketing
Nov. 27, 2004. 01:00 AM
Toronto talent helps sell Las Vegas
Stan Kates, who perfected presale marketing techniques in the Toronto condo market, has won recognition in Las Vegas from a developers' group for his high-tech selling system.
Last month, he won the "Best Use of Technology" award from a new organization called the International Luxury Developer Council in an event co-sponsored by CenterPoint, a Florida-based company that funds project marketing in return for units in a project, and Greenspun Media. The event, at the Aladdin Resort & Casino, focused on the role of high-rise condominiums in Las Vegas.
The Kates Marketing Group recently marketed a Las Vegas condo project called the Manhattan, a series of mid-rise buildings with 700 units, ranging in price from $200,000 (U.S.) to $550,000.
The project, now under construction, sold out in three months, Kates said.
In February, he will start selling two 50-storey towers in a condo project called Las Vegas Central, located close to the city's convention centre. It will include a total of 1,000 units priced from $200,000 to $1.5 million.
"What I'm doing, I'm bringing Canadian or Toronto talent into the market," says Kates. "Las Vegas will become a real high-rise city within the next 10 years and our company will be responsible for selling many thousands of those units."
The Las Vegas Central project, he says, will feature virtual reality tours created by Aareas Interactive, of Toronto; touch-screen self-serve kiosks designed and built by King Products of Mississauga; and HarNak Computer Consulting of Toronto will produce the proprietary database management software and the data mining toolkit.
In the late 1990s, Kates was selling a luxury project in Las Vegas called the Versailles, with the help of a nine-minute video and an imaginative sales-pitch. He managed to sell 26 out of 84 units, which had prices up to $7.85 million. But the developers, he said, didn't have the funds and the project died.
Kates first tested his preselling techniques in 1972 at a 2,600-unit project called Villages of Central Park in Brampton.
star staff
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- posted by Michael P. Whelan @ 1:44 PM