The meeting before the meeting
Before a lender, a landowner or a prospective partner sits down with you, they have already formed a view. They searched the firm. They looked at the website, read the principals’ profiles and tried to work out what you have built and how it went.
In a small development or investment firm, that public record is often behind the truth. The two best projects are not on the site because nobody had time to write them up. The principals’ biographies are from the last company. The deck in circulation is three versions old.
None of this reflects how good the firm is at the work. It reflects where the hours go. A firm with three people and five live projects does not have a spare afternoon. The cost is quiet: a call that is not returned, a partner who chooses the firm that looked more established.
The two best projects are not on the site because nobody had time to write them up.
What we take off the principals’ desks
We act as your outsourced business manager. The list is agreed in writing before we begin, and in a real estate firm it can include:
- A weekly conversation with the principals, with decisions and owners recorded.
- A project information routine. When a project reaches a milestone, the facts, figures and photographs are collected once and stored where they can be found.
- Keeping the one-page summaries, the firm overview and the deck current, so the version you send is always the latest.
- Coordination with your designer, your photographer, your web developer and your printer.
- Organizing the supporting documents for a raise so they are complete and consistently named. Your counsel decides what goes in and who may see it.
- A monthly report in plain words.
We are not brokers, attorneys or securities advisers. We do not prepare or verify your projections, and we do not solicit investors. We organize, write and present what is yours, within what your counsel allows.
Marketing a real estate firm
Real estate marketing has to connect a vision to practical detail. A polished rendering is not enough. The reader wants to understand who the principals are, what the firm has done and why this project makes sense.
We start with three questions. Who are you? What are you about? Why should a partner or an investor choose to work with you? The answers shape everything that follows.
Then we build or repair the pieces a serious reader checks:
- Principal profiles. What each person has built, financed or managed, in plain terms, with nothing that cannot be supported.
- Project stories. For each completed or current project: the site, the plan, the challenge, what was delivered. Short, factual and illustrated.
- A track record page. One place where the firm’s history is laid out simply. It is the page most often missing and most often looked for.
- The website. Clear on a phone, with a way to reach a principal directly.
- The one-page summary and the deck. The same message at three lengths, so an introduction, a summary and a presentation never contradict each other.
PR: telling the project’s story to the right people
A development has natural moments: a site acquired, approvals granted, ground broken, a topping out, an opening. Each one is news to somebody. The local business press, trade publications, neighborhood groups and the city’s own channels all cover projects, and they prefer a story that arrives complete.
We prepare the announcement, the fact sheet and the images. We build the list of people who cover your kind of project in your area, send the story and follow up. We also help the principals prepare for interviews and community meetings, so the message about a project is the same from every voice in the firm.
Community relations matter as much as press. A plain project page that answers neighbors’ questions about traffic, height, timing and who to contact often prevents rumors from filling the gap.
No one can promise coverage, and we never do. We promise the story will be accurate, ready and well placed.
Social media for a firm that sells nothing online
A developer does not need to post every day. Most of the audience that matters is small: lenders, brokers, partners, city staff and future tenants. They check your professional profile now and then, and what they need to see is a firm that is active and consistent.
A sensible routine is modest:
- Project milestones, with a photograph and two or three factual sentences.
- The principals’ professional profiles kept current and matching the website.
- Occasional short pieces on what the firm is seeing in its market, written carefully and reviewed before they go out.
- Nothing about an open offering unless your counsel has cleared it.
Raising capital: where care matters most
When a firm raises money, communication is governed by securities rules. What you may say publicly, and to whom, depends on how the offering is structured. This is your securities counsel’s territory, and we work inside the lines they draw.
Within those lines there is real work to do. The deck must be clear. The numbers on page four must match the numbers on page nine. The supporting documents must be complete. Investor updates must go out on schedule after the raise, in good quarters and bad.
For clients on the 90-Day Plan we also offer a financial pitch deck for a single project as an add-on, built from your own numbers. The projections are yours, and your counsel approves the deck before any investor sees it.
Advertising for housing has its own rules as well. Fair housing law limits how properties may be described and who they may appear to be aimed at. We write listings and project copy with that in mind and ask you to have anything in doubt reviewed.
How we work inside your team
One principal approves what goes out. We ask for about an hour a week. Your website, your accounts, your documents and your contact list stay yours, and we work in them with access you control.
Where to start
The 90-Day Plan is a good first step for a firm whose public record has fallen behind: a review of the website and profiles, your three answers, five rewritten pages, twelve pieces of content and a monthly discussion with your team, for one fixed fee. If a raise is coming, tell us the timing and we will plan around it.