Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another S.S.G. Meetup, your host, Alvaranunye to bring you another successful and interesting guest in the luxury space. Today we have with us the founder and partner of bespoke real estate. His name is Michael Cantwell.
And this company is a boutique real estate that has been that tremendous when it comes to the ultra luxury market, specialized on properties from 10 million and above. In fact, they're celebrating their 10th year anniversary with over $10 billion worth of real estate sold. And he's going to tell us all about how to get yourself into the market and how to be able to get some of the most incredible listings in the world. Here we are my friend.
How are you Michael? I'm good, Alvaro. Thank you so much for having me on. Yes, it is my pleasure and very excited to really understand a little bit about the story behind how you got started.
Was it something that you always envisioned to focus from the very get-go into properties that were 10 million and above? Myself personally, no, I started out as a creative director and a chief marketing officer in the agency side. And then eventually started my own business and my partners who co-founded bespoke, Zachary Cody Buchinsky, where real estate brokers out here in the Hamptons, they originally came out here to speculate on how you do development. And they came to me and kind of said, hey, we've been doing this for a while.
And we see this kind of opportunity in the market where there's this void, right? So people that were selling a $500,000 property or a $25 million property were relatively using the same tools and tactics and frankly budgets to promote these listings. So, where there's kind of a void there creates opportunity in our opinion. So we said, OK, if we were to come out here, the Hamptons is one of the most premier ultra-luxury real estate markets in the world.
During its peak season, it has the kind of like highest concentration of ultra-high net worth individuals for a season. This would be a great market to kind of open up a new brokerage with a new business model and see how successful we could be. So we launched in 2014 as the first and only real estate brokerage to solely list properties above $10 million. OK, that kind of message to the marketplace, I would say, it made a big impact because it was the first time that something came out there that was really different.
And that was really just the beginning of what our model was to separate us from, I guess, the traditional brokerage model. That makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. And it's very intimidating for a lot of people to even try to penetrate that market.
And the fact that you guys set up that standard of, OK, we're only working with properties that are $10 million and above. How do you actually get yourself to stand out from other brokerages that also can specialize on these type of properties? So a few things. One was on the marketing and the creative side, we delivered a high competitive advantage.
We went from people taking ordinary photo packages and really lack of any type of video concept. And one of these shoots is if we were being paid to do it by an architectural digest. So the highest-end caliber of photos, highest-end caliber of video, which listen, it sounds crazy to say now because of the way real estate marketing is evolved. But back in 2014, even for a $30 million, $40 million listing, people weren't shooting video.
So we started doing that for relatively every property doing the most premium marketing materials, leather-bound VIP boxes with gold foil and iPad and really just presenting properties in the way that we felt that they deserved to be represented. But that was kind of a service. So we built this brand. It was a glossy brand.
Everybody felt that it was kind of the epitome of local brokerage at the time. Marketing was really tight. But the real differentiators was how we service our clients. And that is, if you know how traditional brokerages operate, you have a brokerage that sometimes has its franchises, that basically their client is an independent agent.
And then that agent services the user. So we said, OK, well, there's kind of a dilution of resources to the end user at that point. So we built this model, which is really what we refer to as a direct-to-client model, where we do have brokers, very few, in fact, very selected exclusive collection of top brokers. But when you list with bespoke, you list with our entire company.
So it's like hiring an investment bank to sell your business for $50 million versus hiring an investment broker. And sure, you just get more resources. The job of an agent is very hard, as you know. They have to procure a new business.
They have to sell. They have to deal with renters. They have to deal with buyers. They have to deal with budgeting.
They have to deal with market. There's a lot of pieces of pizza in that pie. So what we came in and said, OK, the broker portion of that job should be this. And the marketing should be this.
And the research and data should be this. Service, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And we built out this ecosystem of resources to kind of redefine what it meant to hire somebody to sell and market your property. And over time, what really set us apart, beyond having great buzz and what we think of these as a better brokerage model for servicing people on the high end, was that because we didn't have that agent layer, most brokerages and agent holds all of that data and all of those relationships.
At bespoke, the company holds it. So over time, we grew this amazing database to fuel what we refer to as the bespoke method, which really is our hyper-targeted data-driven marketing tool that we've used to sell properties very effectively and very directly to the most qualified prospect without having to blast it all over using traditional mediums. And that, I think, has been one of the biggest driving factors into our long-term success is how we kind of compile leverage and utilize data to market and sell high-end homes. That's very interesting, right?
Because you've been in the business for over 10 years already and you've been working with these individuals for so long that then you create this network, and then you can start working within that infrastructure a lot. It is interesting because a lot of these individuals, they obviously don't have just one property in the mountains. They usually have in multiple homes around the world. And that's why I've seen that you also have catered and sold some incredible trophy listings in other areas of the world, including where I'm currently based here in Miami.
And I think that my question to you will be, how can you maintain that level, those standards, so that people keep on coming to you rather than jumping into the next brokerage? So I think it's really simple. Scaling and keeping standards has been one of the things that we've put the most emphasis on. We have always focused on the quality of our service more than the quantity, right?
So we scaled slowly, to be honest. We really got our footprint strong into the Hamptons, where we started doing more than 50% of the 10 million-plus trades in the Hamptons out of 15, 16, 20 brokerages. We do about half that business. Last year alone, we did over 70% of all the deals over 20% and 100% of all the deals over 30 million.
So we built that foundation first, so that we were really strong here and it was bedrock and you could not shake the service we offer here. And then we started to work in Manhattan. We started taking properties in Caribbean. We sold an $80 million house in Aspen.
We have a $45 million property coming on Greenwich. We opened up a shop down in Miami. We've had a great deal of success there. Our CEO Zachary Bajinsky, he lives down in Miami with you enjoying beautiful weather that we don't have to have here right at the moment, hence by best.
Yeah, well, come visit, come visit us. And we should definitely find some time to link up. But Zach moved down there. We had some really great success.
We brought on some fantastic properties using the same methodology that we grew our business with in the Hamptons. And we've also then had the benefit of saying, listen, the wealthiest people and the most qualified prospects and sellers that are selling in South Florida right now, and in Manhattan, typically tend to own a high-end home in the Hamptons. Right? So it's the same circle of people.
And it was frankly the Hamptons client that we brought to the biggest sale in Miami last year, which I heard about 18 Lagours, $132 million trade, top trade. We spoke representative of IER. We worked in collaboration with a great team down there of brokers, the Jills and Brett Harris. So we have good relationships with the agents down there.
And we've been able to kind of not just take the relationships that we've built by starting our business in the Hamptons, but all of that data, right? That we've compiled over over a thousand transactions and all of the data that we've kind of mined from basically investing into a research and data division that basically looks at everybody throughout the United States that has a property value of about 7 million. And making those profiles of prospects so that when we say we're marketing your property, we're not just marketing it to a stimulus to people, we're going directly to the most likely buyers that are very targeted and systematic and proven way. So that's how we've been able to do that.
And even transaction markets like the Caribbean, our top trade there was over $60 million. We currently represent six senses in the Bahamas and they have 28 homes there for sale. So we've been able to kind of just make sure we were strong. Our foundation was really tight and then we grew slowly and methodically using the same principles.
Wow. I mean, it's very impressive what you guys built over the years. And a lot of the people that are currently trying to make themselves to that pinnacle point selling those type of trophy listings or somebody that's starting, it feels very intimidating. Right?
So I'm going to make this from what I'm saying, it requires a lot of consistency when it comes to doing this over and over. Now, is there an expedited way for you to say, hey, this is where you can get that pool of ultra high net worth individuals that might give you a shot or is it a specific marketing approach that really is working right now that it made you stand out? What will be your advice for those that are trying to get into that space? I think that it boils down to one thing that I'm sure you've heard before.
The world has changed in terms of the level of service and communication that people are typically offering. If you want to stand out in this market and you are dealing with the most qualified buyers and sellers, it boils down to communication. Okay. I think you could mess up a million things.
Your photos could not be perfect. Right? This could not be perfect. You couldn't have as much traction as you want.
But if you're not communicating with people, that's where relationships go to fall. Right? So if you're going to start in this business, right? Wherever price point you're starting and whoever you're starting with, focus on communicating with your clients in the best possible way.
Right? And then with the resources in the marketplace, be collaborative. You know, we try to operate like Switzerland. Don't come in and try to be a bullet and try to shop and take everything over.
Build your resources and your network and your pool so that if you have a problem or you have something, you have places to go and all boils down to communication and relationships. And I would say on top of that, discover what your competitive advantage is. Ours was that we leverage nuances data. We have really good creative and we have a sole focus on a certain price point in the market.
We're not everything to everybody. So you got to carve out your niche. That's a good point. Now, out of everything that you're currently doing, I'm sure that you've faced a lot of different failures or obstacles, what is one that will you recall being one of the hardest hurdles that you've had to overcome?
What do you learned from it? I'll speak for myself. If that's okay, rather than from the company, I think in this regard, you know, what we've been blessed with from the beginning is I have been credible partners, Zach is an incredible, incredible visionary CEO. I would say, Cody is one of the most likable and informed real estate professionals in the world.
But beyond that, we have a really great support system. Appispeok. We have two women that have worked with us since the beginning that we call the Kate's Kate and Kate and a group of other people that have really helped us over time as we scaled. I think, you know, not emphasizing enough energy on building the right team and building the right support system internally has caused, I would say, you know, slowed down the process to growth.
So what I focus now on 10 years later is really investing into the people that are surrounding me trying to make the company the best they could possibly be. And we've done that. I would say going into 2025, we have the best team of resources we've ever had. Everybody in the Career Department is really that you know, they're really excited about what they're doing.
Same thing with social media marketing or business development team is excited and curious about how we can do new and exciting things to kind of bring in business. Our sales professionals are really on it. And this is coming out of what I would say two years of what hasn't been a great real estate market. So to be able to kind of keep that energy and build that team at a time where things aren't as prosperous as perhaps they've been in the past has been a hurdle.
But an obstacle we ultimately came over that is what I feel like is paying dividends to us now. That's a great point. And yeah, we experience that a lot. Now I will say that with innovation and adaptation, right?
Because one of the things that we've always been seeing is that the industry keeps evolving. You got to adapt now with artificial intelligence and these other things coming up. Is there anything in particular that you've been putting the effort or the focus to transition towards that? I would say there's a lot of different ways that you can play with AI.
For us, the biggest thing that we've been investing in from the beginning and we're advancing our investment to that now is the world of data analytics, right? We are trying to enhance our systems for basically what is we refer to as simply profile matching, right? Like our job is to pair V-World's most exclusive properties with V-World's most qualified buyers. And what sellers want is they want you to do that as quickly and as effectively as possible, right?
This time is money for everybody. So we have systems and data that we've been building out for quite some time that do that. So everything we're investing in now is how do you accelerate that kind of probability matching back end work that gets done in our system. Beyond that, we're doing the same thing that everybody else is doing between advances in architectural visualization, trying to make everybody's work life easier and quicker and more efficient things of that nature.
But really, I think the success is in the data. We are not a firm that's relying just on certain tools and tactics. Our goal is to continuously enhance our database and have our database not only grow in its size, but grow in its capability and have smarter. That's where we're going today.
I love it. Great question for you. We always ask these two all of our guests. What is luxury to you?
So what's interesting about that is that I have the benefit, which I'm extremely grateful for, to be surrounded by what people would call without question the most luxurious assets, right? Our average sale price is close to $30 million at this point. And we see some incredible homes designed by some of the best professionals in the space and all of the things that surround these people. But what I found the true luxury within those things is people are building spaces that are trying to give them a sense of peace and serenity that is often only found through time.
So, while it's great to aspire to have these amazing assets and have this amazing wealth, the pursuit of wealth should be so that you can buy back your time and be able to spend it doing the things that you love. If that makes sense. Absolutely. That's beautiful.
Well, my friend, this is an incredible conversation with a lot of great taking ways for everybody listening. The last question for you will be if you will have to start over. If I had to start over, would I change anything? You know, I can say with certainty, I wouldn't take any of the bad days away because I think that's where it might sound cliche.
But that's where we learned the most lessons. You learn how to not be affected by stress or workload or things like that. I've honestly enjoyed my journey and it's had its bumps in the roads. But everything that I've done has brought me to this point, which is ultimately the happiest that we've been personally and our business is thriving.
So I can't say I would change anything because who knows what quantum realms we would spin off into. I'm very happy with where we are today. That's beautiful. Well, I appreciate everything that you've shared with us today.
I wish you luck and hey, if you think it's too cold over there, just come visit us here in Miami. It's always a good time. Lots of things happening. I've been there often.
Maybe I'll jump in when your helicopter rides and we can go shopping or something like that. Will there's something fun like that. All right. Sweet.
Thank you. Thank you again for everything. I look forward to working together. Thank you so much.
Have a great day. Bye. Thanks again for everybody tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed it.
I remember embracing beautiful success in life. My name is Alvaro and I'll see you next time.