L&F is now owned by Berkshire Hathaway aka Warren Buffet.

Anonymous wrote:Surely the management troubles of one local company pale in comparison to the more important forces threatening the realtor industry.

that's exactly it! isn't this the biggest real estate firm on the east coast? if it is, it makes the perfume and expense to market it (with a glossy magazine in the post to baby boomers?) all the more insane. if disruption on several fronts threatens the industry as a whole, wouldn't one want to see a large firm hit back with solid marketing about what they can do for the customer? what the value added is of an agent's experience? if luxury is important, how much they cater to the client's needs, etc?

Surely the management troubles of one local company pale in comparison to the more important forces threatening the realtor industry.

Anonymous wrote:My mom's a long-retired LF Realtor and she said years ago that the younger family member (Wes Foster's son?) who now runs LF was going to run it into the ground.

What about the huge, vacant monstrosity in Chantilly that he built as company HQ? Took forever to complete

The problem is that none of Wes’s three children wanted to run the company and they turned it over to a vague nephew with the unhappy first name of Boomer. This happened around 2010 when the mortgage companies were faltering. Rather than hire executives who knew real estate, L and F hired failed mortgage company execs. I left the company and went to another small family owned business and am wrapping up my career so I am fine. But all of these local companies will be gone in a few years and Compass and TTR will dominate inside the Beltway and Keller Williams outside the Beltway. Redfin will be active for the DIY market.

Wes is still alive but if he weren’t, he’d be spinning in his grave over a house perfume. I hope Betty didn’t tell him about it.

Wydler Brothers is now part of Compass, FYI.

The glossy magazine in the post uses 10-20 pages to go on and on with the perfume. Not the main mission of the real estate company. This is what I find so amazing. PP mentioned hotel perfume - yes, friends of mine have bought pillows, robes, even ordered matresses from hotels - after staying there. But what is the comparable experience here? And then there are these weird sections on caring for your luxury purse, and pages about the power of flowers as demonstrated by lavish displays in las vegas. It is just off the wall.

Bottom line - I'd never choose a real estate agent based on her/his perfume. Why would I work for a company, or sell my house with a company because of how it smells? It just doesn't seem serious. For example, Wilder brothers used to run ads in the Washingtonian with the MBAs and qualifications of each brother, nice graphics, clean messaging - it looked like a well run local family firm that was through and bottom line focused. (I have no idea if it was but the marketing strategy was sharp) Other local companies, like Keller Williams or McEnerney, I don't see enough of their marketing materials to say. But the Long and Foster catalogue really struck me as stunningly bad.

I am a Long and Foster agent and was formerly a Compass agent (L&F offered me a great split). I'm on the younger side of my peers in my mid-30s, everything about L&F feels so 1990s. The "cafe" where we write our offers remind me of AOL or Yahoo. I get so much junk email from solicitors. L&F itself probably emails me 10 times a day, and it's all absolute junk. Training schedules, advertising in the WaPo (who does this?!) etc. If they didn't offer me such a great split I would leave. Compass is cool, attractive and offers a lot for anyone looking to grow their business (I'm not looking to grow) but they must spend SO much money on their search/maps and everyone just uses Redfin anyways.

This post just reads like a strange Compass ad. I don't think this is much different than a hotel line selling a fragrance

19:56:

This is bad:

Chantilly-based Long & Foster Real Estate has released a product you may not have realized you wanted: its own bespoke home fragrance, LF68, named for the year the company was founded.
The scent, created by French fragrance maker MANE, will be sold at Long & Foster offices during the holiday season.
According to Long & Foster, which is the largest privately-owned real estate firm in the nation, LF68 will feature “leading notes of champagne rose and rhubarb,” as well as background notes of lemon, amber and patchouli. MANE’s proprietary scent Lavender Leaves Jungle Essence adds “a clean, fresh and natural feeling to a floral heart.”
The 250ml glass bottle, with eight reeds included, retails for $150 and will be available at lfhomescents.com.

My mom's a long-retired LF Realtor and she said years ago that the younger family member (Wes Foster's son?) who now runs LF was going to run it into the ground.

What about the huge, vacant monstrosity in Chantilly that he built as company HQ? Took forever to complete

Did anyone get a Long and Foster shiny catalogue in this weekend's Washington Post advertising some kind of house perfume called LF 68 with a kind of fake fendi logo? Is Compass eating Long and Foster's lunch - so they are flailing frantically? What are they trying to do with this weird campaign? Compass has a clean and modern message/branding - https://www.compass.com/about/ (e.g. "our mission is to help everyone find their place in the world") Meanwhile, Long and Foster offers a scent? After a few nice houses (this section led with Maryland, and said it had "arrived" but then showed mostly houses in DC) the magazine then digressed into "How to protect and store your luxury purse" ??!! I'm not kidding!!

It is like a text book study in diluting your brand -- impossible to tell the message, or who the audience is. Do they plan to sell this perfume? Will they make margins by volume? Will they sell the perfume at open houses? Sell it at luxury stores? Open perfume boutiques in malls? I've lived in DC for years, work in a totally different field, notice compass driving prices up in my neighborhood (which I have mixed feelings about - this isnt't to blindly extoll compass), and also see them selling the majority of houses where I live, so it would seem to me that the regional and smaller local players have to up their game, and selling a perfume in this context just looks daft and incompetent.