Real estate marketing industry getting larger-than-life

New York City real estate marketing isn’t what it used to be. Between the cadre of stagers, photographers and publicists it takes to sell an apartment in 2010, longtime brokers reminisced to the New York Times this week about the simpler days — when Michele Kleier said she sold premier Park Avenue properties with little more than classified newspaper ads that read “Superb condition. Sun filled. Excel. maint.” One reason for the explosion of marketing and promotion in the real estate world is simply the addition of thousands of units to the marketplace, but as the industry has grown, it’s also changed. Exclusive listings are now the norm, but that wasn’t always the case, and brokers didn’t devote resources to listings that bore no guaranteed income. There’s also more at stake today. Kleier, who sold that “sun filled” apartment at 1125 Park Avenue for $145,000 in 1977, just closed on a unit in the same building for $4 million, but only after investing in a catered luncheon for brokers at the home, paying for multiple website advertisements and featuring it on HGTV’s “Selling New York.” [NYT]