After launching successful real estate portals with media giants in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan, Sotheby’s International Realty has its eye on another market: Mexico. In partnership with business publication Expansión, Sotheby’s has launched Mexico’s first-ever global real estate search portal for luxury homebuyers and sellers.
Brad Nelson
“As the only truly international luxury real estate brand, our affiliation with Expansión and Grupo Expansión enables us to deliver even broader global exposure for each of the impressive listings represented by the Sotheby’s International Realty network,” SIR Chief Marketing Officer Brad Nelson said in an exclusive written statement sent to Inman.
“The affiliation with Expansión not only promotes our exciting properties to a luxury and business audience, it also builds on our history of encouraging technological advancement in the real estate industry in global markets.”
Starting Monday, more than 15 million readers will be able to browse through Sotheby International Realty’s 50,000 active for-sale listings in 72 countries — a first for the Mexican real estate market, Nelson explained.
“At Sotheby’s International Realty, a key element of our value proposition is taking the listings we represent and exposing them in more places around the world,” he told Inman on a phone call. “And I mean, it’s literally our middle name. Sotheby’s International Realty.”
“This has been a key priority for us for many years, and in markets outside of the United States where there’s not a multiple listing service, we’ve been working aggressively with key media partners to bring more awareness to our properties and to enable property search we’re really accustomed to in the United States,” he added.
Nelson said Mexico was an obvious next step for Sotheby’s media partnership program since the country is one of the top five feeder markets for luxury listings in California, Colorado, Texas, and Florida.
“We were taking a look at the data from the National Association of Realtors on international homebuying activity in the United States, and Mexico ranks as one of the top five feeder markets, as countries are concerned, for the U.S.,” he explained.
“We did our research in terms of identifying who would be the right media partner in Mexico where we could expose of all our listings to, and Expansión was the natural fit as a leading, highly reputable publisher in Mexico with very strong traffic to their website.”
Sotheby’s Expansión portal.
Expansión is part of Mexican media group Grupo Expansión, and covers finance, technology, arts, and lifestyle. To access Sotheby’s listings, readers must click the ‘Inmobiliario’ tab. From there, potential buyers can view multi-million-dollar listings from across the world, such as a $150 million Southhampton beachfront estate or a $129 million palace in Cannes.
Each listing provides photos, a brief explanation of the home’s features, and a contact form that connects buyers to a Sotheby’s International Realty listing agent.
“As a global company, we’ve built a very sophisticated database with local taxonomy of all these different regions, so that allows us to advertise and display all of our listings with media partners,” Nelson said. “We’ve also built a very sophisticated promotion plan around that, so we’re running advertisements and sponsored content on Expansión’s platform to drive awareness and traffic.”
“We’re trying to bring an opportunity for them to not only search properties in Mexico, but also to allow them to pursue second-home opportunities whether that’s in Colorado, California or Texas, which are some of the popular markets,” he added.
Sotheby’s will be Expansión’s exclusive listing provider until 2021. After the one-year deadline, Expansión will be able to add listings from other luxury brokerages.
“In the international luxury market it’s all about identifying what are those feeder markets and we’ve done so much work over the past years in creating these platforms and marketing exposure for our listings in Europe and Asia,” he concluded. “So we’ve been raising the bar and figuring out how can we challenge ourselves again.”
