Phil Chiricotti

After listing my multimillion-dollar Burr Ridge, IL home for over three years with four different realtors and getting few showings and no bids, I turned my decades of marketing and ERISA retirement plans due diligence experience on non-distressed luxury home auctioneers. After one year of due diligence, I teamed with Chicago’s Auction Works, structured the agreements and worked closely with their staff to customize my own accelerated marketing campaign. In a pre-auction bidding war that resulted in a cash offer, the house sold during the first month for more than my unpublished reserve with backup offers exceeding my expectations. Marketing, not listing, is the key to successful home sales. To reduce the cost of carry beyond the time certain outcome and the direct marketing expenses, our broad campaign included heavy emphasis on pre-auction bids, non-traditional advertising, media placement and aggressive PR. Because most of the serious inquiries came from foreigners, invaluable proprietary databases were used to target select control groups, local brokers, homeowners, foreign investors and underserved multicultural groups.