Shoes, purse, condo: Shopping for real estate extends to upscale malls

Dan Teixeira at the Galleria kiosk
Dan Teixeira at the Galleria kiosk

Weekend to-do list: shop for clothes, shoes, gifts — and a condo — at the mall.

Douglas Elliman has joined the latest trend: opening a kiosk at the Galleria at Fort Lauderdale, as upscale malls become the new frontier for brokerage firms.

The new Douglas Elliman kiosk exclusively features the Wave at Bayshore, an 18-unit project with prices starting at $750,000, said Dan Teixeira, vice president of business development at Douglas Elliman in Fort Lauderdale.

“We had the kiosk designed like the building — very sleek and contemporary and very visual, and we kept in mind that we were in a high-end mall so it’s a very soft type of marketing that people want,” Teixeira told The Real Deal.

The kiosk, open since late last month on the mall’s second floor between Mayors and Neiman Marcus, has led to 10 to 12 inquiries a day for the 11-story project, which is located about half a mile away from the mall, Teixeira said. It is now 61 percent sold, he said.

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“We noticed that our buyers have all been people that really are buying it because of the architecture,” Teixeira said. “There are a lot of LGBT buyers, and the more we looked at it, it was a commonality with fashion, shopping and architecture.”

Other firms have also jumped on the mall bandwagon, hoping to lure in buyers from the thousands of annual visitors. Last year, Edge Real Estate set up a kiosk lounge in the middle of the Town Center at Boca Raton mall, close to Saks Fifth Avenue and Tiffany & Co., to cater to the elite shoppers who stroll by.

“In this marketplace, you have to do something different to compete,” Ledwitz, founder of Edge Real Estate Brokers, told TRD at the time, “and to show people you have marketing prowess.”

Turnberry International Realty also markets its Turnberry Ocean Club from a prominently located kiosk on the main floor of Aventura Mall. The mall, itself, of course, is majority owned by Turnberry Associates.

Marketing outside the traditional brokerage office also extends beyond shopping centers. Prestige Imports, an exotic car dealership in North Miami Beach, last year began selling Paramount Miami Worldcenter condos from a Turnberry International Realty office inside its Lamborghini showroom.