In this podcast, Byron Lazine and Laura Brady, founder and CEO of Concierge Auctions, sit down to discuss how she kick-started her company and how it evolved into the fast-growing international luxury real estate auction firm that it is today.
Brady’s success has been noted by numerous publications the likes of CNBC Money, Bloomberg, the Today Show, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, to name a few. What’s more, for the past three years, she also made Inman’s list of “100 most influential people in real estate.”
Before launching her company, Brady worked as a luxury real estate agent along with Chad Roffers, who’s now the co-founder and chairman of Concierge Auctions. “We knew ahead of [2008] that there was some sort of pending market downturn that was coming,” she said in the podcast. “We just didn’t know the extent of it.” That’s when she started looking into auction as a way to help sellers create more a time-certain sale.
Since no other auction firm was approaching the market quite like Brady thought was possible, she decided to take that step and start Concierge Auctions with Roffers. Since then, it has sold close-to $2.5 billion in properties across 40 U.S. states and 29 countries, serving a roster of clients looking at high-end houses across the world.
Given today’s COVID-19 landscape, Lazine asked how the current situation is affecting the luxury market, and what changes Brady might be expecting going into the future.
“There will likely be a number of months where we’ll see some pent-up demand and some prices being similar to what they had been pre-COVID,” she said. “However, I then feel like there’s going to be an increase in inventory with homes being listed by virtue of how much change is going on in everyone’s lifestyle right now. It’s going to cause them to want to transact their homes in different ways.”
Lazine and Brady also talked about how the pandemic will likely influence the different types of properties buyers will be drawn to. (Think: houses boasting lots of room to roam, vast, open fields and self-sustaining elements.) Moreover, Brady discussed the kinds of shifts she’s been seeing in clientele as well as the way business is conducted in today’s world.
The conversation also pivoted to Brady breaking down the auction process — from how Concierge Auctions curates a list of properties to take on, down to how bidding works — and sharing advice for agents eager to get on her radar.
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