Photo courtesy of LuxRECapeCod
Brian Pothier
Managing Partner, LuxRECapeCod
Industry Experience: 39 years
As larger residential brokerages eat up their smaller competition across the country, the LuxRECapeCod team made the decision to separate from Gibson Sotheby’s International Realty and open its own office.
The newly independent brokerage, led by Brian Pothier and Matt Leonard, is betting Cape Cod residents will value their independence as they seek representation that knows the unique nature of buying and selling out on the Cape.
LuxRECapeCod is also hoping its aim using local contractors and local businesses market and stage properties will boost the local economy and its local reputation. The brokerage believes that its unique approach compared to more traditional options will allow for sellers to have better returns and sell their properties quicker.
Q: What went into your team’s decision to leave Gibson Sotheby’s?
A: It’s absolutely going against the trend of what’s going on in the country. [The brand it’s affiliated with is owned by] Compass; everything’s being consumed up, and it’s very corporate-driven. Cape Cod’s just a very unique market that I don’t think the bigger companies really have a direct understanding of. You look at the town of Orleans, which we operate as the main location. It’s got the highest population over the 65 in the state of Massachusetts. Print media is pretty much dead or looking to be dead any place in the world other than Cape Cod, so we’re actually expanding [our use of] print media, which is absolutely against the trend, but it’s our marketplace and it’s a really unique place.
Q: These big companies might have more agent supports and infrastructure. Going out on your own, what’s the value-add?
A: I’ve been in this business 39 years. By virtue of that, I’ve worked with all those types of companies and the trend, even in this marketplace, has been bigger companies. The major players buy out these little companies, and the home-seller, they don’t benefit from that process. We’re looking to give our sellers the biggest bang for the dollar and the maximum marketing and controlling the marketing. So, we can actually sit down with a seller and say, “You will be in the paper. You will be here. You will be there.” That doesn’t happen with these major players. The agent is limited to what the company would do and if you want to do any more, you pay for it yourself.
Our model is, we really want to support local staging and styling division indirectly. Even at the size we are now, [that] creates jobs for 15, 20 people. What we love is creating local jobs, and having a team type of environment where everybody wins. It makes a big difference. We market the real estate. Every property we style, we stage and really marketing at the extreme, instead of the way the process is now. At this point, there’s oodles of people that want to leave, as far as agents go, and come into an environment like we’re creating because they are tired. I think people are tired of it in general.
Q: How important do you feel marketing and staging are in the current market?
A: We stage and style every property, and our staging and style includes, at times, light fixtures, accent wall painting on steroids. It’s not just going in and moving [furniture] around. We run probably 18 to 20 households of furniture in any given day, so we’ve got moving people, vans, the whole bit. We feel that strongly about it. You look at the average buyer coming here doesn’t live here. A lot of these sellers, this is their second home. They don’t live here. They’ve rented it out a little bit. They’re elderly. So, we come in and actually refurnish it to give it that Cape Cod feel. Almost all your buyers look online in the beginning.
We are anti-AI, and if you look at now, they [other brokerages] are doing a lot of marketing with an AI picture. They are adding in patios. It’s false advertising. It’s misleading the buyer. So, when you look at ours online, when you come in and look at it, it looks like that [photo]. Our staging is really multiple layers, with anything from the little things that sit on the little coffee tables. We feature a lot of local Cape Cod artists. It’s not cheap artwork, but it really gives that fantastic look to the properties. It really gets the seller more money, and they sell quicker. Typically having that stage-and-style in that process, you’re definitely selling it quicker, and most of the time, you’re going to get at least 10 percent more than you ever would have gotten if somebody comes in and just shoots it the way it is, because it gives the feeling like you move right in.
Q: Do you feel that LuxeRECapeCod is a test case to see whether independent brokerages can still thrive, despite the consolidation we’re continuing to see in the market?
A: If you looked at our brand and what we do, the Sotheby’s name – that was more of a hood ornament [for LuxeRECapeCod]. We generated 100 percent of our own business. That name, virtually it’s a franchise. It’s a McDonald’s. You’d say that they bring the technology in. That’s really not true. We have had at least 15 or 20 agent contacts here in the first week, saying “We hate where we are, can we get together and meet?” So, you can see there’s a lot of frustration when it comes to the agents themselves.
We give value, and I don’t think you’re getting that. It’s like anything you do. If you go to McDonald’s, you’re going to get a basic hamburger. If you go to fine dining, it’s going to be a different story. It’s exciting, too, because it’s really fun. This is almost fun for me right now. Somebody would go in and say, “We’ll put it on for $800,000.” We look at it and say, “If we do this, we can put it on for $1 million.” Two hundred thousand dollars makes a big difference for anybody. It’s neat to see the before-and-afters.
Pothier’s Five Favorite Cape Cod Spots
- Salt Pond Visitor Center, Eastham
- Atlantic White Cedar Swamp Trail, Wellfleet
- Provincetown
- Nickerson State Park, Brewster
- Fishermen’s View, Sandwich
