Aug Blog

Dog days of summer…what's going on around the business?

We wanted to schedule a sales manager round-table, for a day, to get ten or twelve pros together and see what's working or not. We all have a program or two that works regardless of outside conditions. Couldn't put it together as there were too many personal conflicts.

On one hand one might say, "What's more important than selling or keeping your job?" On the other hand, these were pros and they know what they know and as we all know personal time is to be kept away from business.

Hart Rist of North Carolina was venturing with us, and I want to thank him for his energy and efforts to make the Eastern half of the round-table go.

Those developers who have breathing room have gone on 'hold' and are planning to come out strong, when the buyers return. Other developers, who don't have much space left, are doing their best. We do know that in fractions lowering the price does not make much of a difference. The 'bail out' guys seem to have come and gone.

At Meriwether the summer sales are beginning to drop. It's been very taxing to get buying decisions made. All the buying signals are there. And, as reported earlier most all the buyers want financing to leverage their purchase, and there's very, very little of it out there. We gone to the old favorite of local bank financing for a handful of deals.

View-up here…Rick Abelson, one of our Meriwether sales pros, did his own video to show clients. Now, this is really using technology in a smart way.
www.video.google.com and then type in Meriwether Ranch. The video, parts 1 and 2 were shot in one day, and, no, the wildlife were not paid to show…they were just there as they always are.

NextStar is in the market, but their underwriting procedure has us baffled. Textron is in the market, they are pros, but do not lend direct, which in this environment may have to be okay. Tom Ward is doing a good job in moving them into more of the main stream for fractions vs. timeshare where they have resided for decades.

Vallarta Gardens is coming together for a strong winter opening. We expect there to be a market, but we'll need to wait and see. The same for Tierra del Sol in Aruba. Pam Temples is applying her talents to the project's interiors.

Sales are going down at the Cape Codder Residence Club in Hyannis, though a bit slower than planned, but at least sales are being made.

We continue to have good experiences transitioning selected timeshare sales pros into fractions. They need mentoring at the outset to change the mind-set, but once they get it they really go to town especially in this environment as they do know how to close in a more direct line. That's a delicate balance, but the good ones we have use their past experiences to their benefit.

June and July were just dead for us in terms of new deals coming our way. August has been very busy so far, and maybe that's an indication - or not.

ULI is two months off and I'm looking forward even now to hear how the
Recreational Development crowd did over the summer.