Dreyfus Properties: Million Dollar Presentation
To sell million dollar homes, you need million dollar presentations. “A lot of luxury real estate is explaining why things cost so much,” says broker Michael Dreyfus. “You really have to show people the quality of what they’re buying, show them the neighborhood, really show them why it’s high-end.” That’s why, when he broke free from a major brokerage to form his own firm, he went with Macs.
“I had been using Macs at home and I kept gravitating towards them for media applications,” he says. “My graphic designers were using Macs and I knew that if we wanted to do innovative things with media, we’d need to use Macs too.”
Today Dreyfus runs Dreyfus Properties, a brokerage in Palo Alto, California. He deals in multi-million dollar homes, mansions, and sprawling properties in one of the state’s most prosperous regions, just minutes from Silicon Valley. His firm employs three agents and oversees the sale of about 40 high-end homes every year. The business is built around an innovative approach to real estate that employs the latest technology to appeal to the area’s tech savvy executives, entrepreneurs and creative professionals. Dreyfus uses Macs in nearly every aspect of the brokerage — importing, organizing and manipulating photos with iPhoto, managing data with FileMaker Pro, accounting with QuickBooks Pro for Mac and, in the future, composing QuickTime walkthroughs using iMovie.
“I started this company six years ago with the idea that I wanted to be more of boutique style business rather than a big franchised one,” he says. “I wanted to be nimbler and quicker, do things a little differently. Our emphasis is on high-quality marketing and high service and the Macs are an integral part of our business.”
At Home at Work
Dreyfus got his first Mac for his home. “I got a Mac laptop because my kids were using them in school,” he says. “I wanted to build a home network, so we got laptops for everyone and I set everything up myself.” The broker used iPhoto, iTunes and iMovie to manage family photos, music and digital video and quickly grew accustomed to carrying his Mac laptop. “I saw my kids doing fairly sophisticated iMovies and slideshows and I realized that I could do the same in my business,” he says.
The agent also wanted to work more closely with the design firms that hammered out all his promotional materials, including flyers, brochures and websites. “The design firm I work with uses Macs and I knew I wanted to work like them,” he says. In the real estate business, things change and they change quickly. Flyers get revised and text gets replaced and massaged to meet new needs. “If I just need to change some text, there’s no reason to employ my design firm to do it,” says Dreyfus. Instead, Dreyfus lets his design firm do what it does best. “I let them get the images and the layout just right, then they can send me a template that I can change on my Mac,” he says. Using Adobe InDesign, Dreyfus is able to modify his pro-designed flyers on the fly.
The more Dreyfus used his Mac, the more he wanted to switch completely. “I just wanted to get away from the whole Windows platform of pain,” he says. “The Mac is easier to network, it doesn’t have viruses and it’s easy to use.” The broker also knew that his firm would have easy access to cutting-edge imaging and video techniques that would impress potential homebuyers. Using his Macs, Dreyfus can give his clients a chance to tour homes on the Internet before they even set foot in the foyer. “We can use iMovie and QuickTime to create virtual tours ourselves,” he says. “In the past all of that was done by a third party. Now time is money and getting things done quickly is very important. With the Macs, we can do it ourselves.”
All in the Details
“The details really make a luxury home,” says Dreyfus. “Two 6,000-square-foot houses can vary in price by as much as $1 million. The only difference is amenities.” Construction methods can vary, but extras like travertine floors, gold-plated faucets and Italian marble tubs can add up. And portraying those niceties accurately in print brochures or online can be tough. “We’ve invested in a lot of equipment — digital SLR cameras and HD video cameras — to improve the quality of our marketing materials.”
