Moreland Hills, Ohio

Richard Moodie, founder of Kraftmaid Cabinetry owned a 5.7 acre estate in suburban Cleveland, OH. After retiring from Kraftmaid and seeking to downsize and relocate, Mr. Moodie attempted for several years to sell his estate in Moreland Hills to no avail. After using several different listing agents, implementing multiple price drops, and even attempting to auction it unsuccessfully, Mr. Moodie was frustrated to say the least until he learned of Interluxe and the online auction approach to get the results he desired.

The challenge for Interluxe was that Cleveland, OH had a depressed housing market (especially in the $1M+ price) and the trend was that more wealthy buyers were leaving the Cleveland market rather than entering it. In order to achieve Mr. Moodie’s goals of selling, Interluxe needed to identify buyers that would have interest in a property of this magnitude in an abbreviated period of time and force those buyers to compete to drive the price to it’s highest value.

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We knew that in order to successfully attract a buyer we would need to downplay the overwhelming size of the property and focus on marketing the livable aspects of the home. In addition to appropriately positioning the property, we determined that our core buyer was a high net worth individual that had ties or attachments to Cleveland rather than someone that could be persuaded to live/relocate to Cleveland. Based on that we focused our marketing heavily on Cleveland, the surrounding central United States, and feeder markets like southwest, FL.

We focused our national marketing efforts through comprehensive online advertising. Online digital marketing was far more cost effective and targeted as opposed to traditional print. Our marketing and promotional plan consisted of ads in the Wall Street Journal, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Crains Cleveland Business, as well as targeted direct mail, comprehensive online advertising (national) and email marketing.

Public relations also provided us a generous amount of press coverage locally leading up to the event. We suggested a local real estate agent who Interluxe knew would have the ability, expertise and who would cooperate with the online auction process to provide brokerage services for the seller and host open houses for prospective purchasers

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The marketing campaign was highly successful. Over 100 families became serious prospective buyers in the 30-day period of marketing that preceded the commencement of the online auction. During the 5-day preview/open house period, 65 groups of people toured the property resulting in 4 bidders registering to participate in the auction. Judging by our registrations we affirmed our core buyer profile as a high net worth individual with ties to Cleveland, OH. Of the 4 bidders that participated in the online auction; 1 resided in Cleveland, 2 resided in southwest, FL, and the final bidder resided in California and was bidding sight unseen. The auction itself produced a recordbreaking price. The property sold for $2,300,000 (including the furniture), which was the highest sale price for a residential property in all of Cleveland for the prior 2 years.