Uptown Girls Nicole Hinkle and Tammy McLaine have listed a stunning estate that reflects where upscale modern contemporary meets the sublime uber rich soccer mom. Completely remodeled this home will offer the last word in modern life style and be the ultimate residence for the most discerning of owners.

The home has several of my favorite elements of any home I would consider. It’s proximity in the city is superb and within a few moments of anything you could want or need, its gated courtyard and incredible backyard pool area that wraps around the house makes you feel that you are not even in the center of Dallas but on some private island. You have celebrity neighbors so you are ensured a booked holiday season, guest quarters to put unwanted guest and lastly the home is just so large (it’s HUGE) your kids and husband could all be home and a staff of two cleaning and cooking and you could still find a peaceful spot and relax with a book.

With all of the above and a 8 head shower in the master, this is what I consider a slice of heaven on earth.

Having just been reduced over one million dollars (yes, over one million dollars) it really is a steal at four point something. The video is a great teaser but do yourself a favor and visit this home on Strait Lane, you will be glad you did.

The Castle (3700 sqm / 39826 sq.ft) listed by St. Peter Sotheby’s International Realty, is one of Italy’s most beautiful monuments and it is considered one of the most scenic and extraordinary castles in the world. Its marvelous Noble Courtyard with the suggestive Fountain of the Mysteries, is surrounded by impressive, historical walls (built between the 9th and 14th century).

All the rooms and the halls are of an incommensurable beauty and the luxuriant medieval park (35.000 sqm), able to accommodate up to 300 guests within its perfectly well tended gardens. It features also a Romanic chapel (850 A.C.). The property rises majestically on the top of the village offering a panorama of great beauty. This castle was owned and ruled by different important families, such as the houses of King Arduino, of the Bishop of Ivrea, the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I and the Savoia. At the end of 1800 the castle has been skillfully restored by the famous architect Alfredo D’Andrade. In 1992 the works of restoration continued and the castle regained its antique magnificence and it offers the highest comforts and the most modern technologies to satisfy the most demanding customers. 30 bedrooms all with A/C + 47 bathrooms and the castle is heated throughout.

The name of Turin comes from Tau, a celtic word that means “mountain”, and it was the ancient Taurasia, capital of the Taurini of Ligurian-Celtic origin, at first hostile, then allied to Rome. In 218 a.C. the inhabitants tried to resist the passage of Hannibal who destroyed the city, which was rebuilt under Augustus and called Iulia Augusta Taurinorum, and the typical Roman street plan with streets at right angles can still be seen in the texture of the modern city centre.

After the fall of the Roman empire, it was occupied by the Heruli and Ostrogoths, and later the seat of a Lombard duchy, then became a county under the Franks. In the first half of the 11th century it was under Countess Adelaide of Susa, who married Oddo, Count of Savoy, son of Umberto Biancamano. In 1294 Amedeus V gave the fiefdom to the Acaya princes, who kept the domain until 1418, when Amedeus VIII, the first Savoy Duke, unified all domains of his dynasty, including Turin, where he often loved to dwell.

In 1536 Torino was conquered by the French and only in 1562 and was recovered after the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis by Emanuele Filiberto, who chose it as his capital and built a fortified citadel. Occupied by the armies of Napoleon in 1798 and the following year by the Austrians, it returned to France after the Marengo Battle in 1800, and was transformed into a French Department. In 1814 it was restored to the House of Savoy under Victor Emmanuel I, who to render thanks erected the Church of the Great Mother of God.

From 1821 to 1848 it was central in the Italian independence movement of the Risorgimento, and in 1861 was proclaimed capital of the Kingdom of Italy; the capital was then moved to Florence in 1864, and to Rome in 1870. Among the leaders in Italian industrialization, Torino was the seat of the earliest Italian automotive industries – the Spa, Italy, Lancia, Fiat -, followed by textile and mechanic factories. Since then Torino has achieved prosperity and progress in industry, commerce and culture.

In the 2001 census, Turin was the fourth largest city in Italy, with a large proportion of people with southern-Italian background as a consequence of the mass immigration of the second half of the twentieth century, and a significant presence of immigrants from abroad.

Here I go again, giving incompetent agents good free publicity. Perhaps I will win a Nobel Peace Prize – and to be honest, I really do subscribe to the theroy that there is no such thing as bad publicity. I won’t, however, hold my breath for a thank you note from this bone head.

A couple of weeks ago, we were contacted by a full on crazy woman – Linda Grossman of Keller Williams in McKinney, Texas. As you know, we work mainly in the higher end market, properties of one million or more. She was a member of Keller Williams Luxury Homes devision, however, being in McKinney she assured me that luxury was slightly under the one million market. Not true, there are many multi-million dollar homes in beautiful McKinney, but she had barely seen the interior of or listed any.

Every other word she said was luxury or luxe. She was very impressed with herself and this designation. Red flag number one. It took me less then three clicks to find out that to be bestowed as a Keller Williams Luxury agent it takes a minimum of effort that could be achieved buy anyone who had gotten the GED in their 30’s, become an agent and just showed up at the office enough to close a few transactions and pay Keller Williams a handsome fee – see for yourself.

I had an Realtor friend look up her seller and buyer rep history. FAR FROM LUXURY. Red flag number two. Sellers, FYI, if you want a proven luxury Realtor go with Allie Beth Allman (locally) or Sotheby’s International Realty (world wide). These people know luxury homes, neighborhoods and the luxury market over all. Linda “Hillbilly” Grossman (as we started calling her) sounded like Fran Drescher from the television show “The Nanny” – always waving her arms and saying “luxury” and “wonderful” and working that blackberry phone like she was the press secretary for President Obama.

She had to have the photos right away, immediately, I told her it would be a two day turn around. She balked but agreed. As the delivery time was counting down my email and phone was blowing up demanding “where are the photos?”. A legitimate request, in this business delivery is essential.

30 hours after she had been sent the photos I got an email from her asking how many photos were in the zipped file I sent her. She had not even opened it. This wacko is really racking up some red flags brothers and sisters.

She also wanted her Virtual Movie Tour to include some of the “luxury sights of the area”, one being a church. This is when our relationship really started to deteriorate. Having a 17 year background in real estate and real estate marketing, I advised her that including a church in real estate marketing materials was, well…. illegal. Fearing she was going to want me to include a text box that said “WHITES ONLY” I started to distance myself from her but she was more and more insistent that the church be included in the video “because everyone up here knows it”.

I am holding a box full of Hillbilly Grossman red flags now.

I kept making adjustments to the video to test my customer service skills and keep the client happy (although I did refuse the church inclusion) but once I had reached the point where I was making about .37 cents an hour I told her to just tell me what she wanted, frame by frame, and I would make it happen. I didn’t have to audition this hard for the Ice Capades.

Did I mention it took her and her assistant two days to figure out how to open a zip file?

Anyway, above is version one of the video, the one she gave me over 27 emailed corrections. For those of you with a strong faith, I apologize, it does not include a church, but any fool right out of real estate school knows that is a marketing NO – NO. When I watch the video I see a handsome home and feel sorry for the seller that does not get to use this Virtual Movie Tour as a marketing tool, yes, she refused to use it. I “pray” her communication skills are better with co-op agents and buyers than they were  with me.

Oh, and a quick follow up – I heard from a friend of a friend (the other photographer she works with that is nice to her face, takes her money and goes on about how he dislikes working with her) that she is a complete boozler. This explains some of her absolutely crazy behavior. My photographer said more than once she called him drunk late at night and when he hung up he told his wife “she wont remember that conversation in the morning”. Sure enough, she called the next day saying the same thing not remembering the conversation. I see 12 steps in her near future.

****UPDATE****

It seems Hillbilly Grossman has lost that loving feeling for McKinney and become a Frisco Star. We wish her new office mates and the residence of Frisco the best of luck.

URBAN WORD OF THE DAY “Two Faced” (n) 1. A fake / phony person who smiles at you in the face and has less than considerate opinions about you behind your back. 2. The Ebby Halliday (cult) Family 3. Shelia Rice at Virginia Cook 4. Linda Grossman who “buys into” a club at Keller Williams (also know as Multi-Level Marketing) called Luxury Homes – when she actually knows nothing about luxury and is the most classless twit I’ve ever met in my life.

While she was driving me around in her car she told me that to her boyfriend she was only a BOOTY CALL. I think that is the definition of UNCOMFORTABLE.

Above is the Virtual Movie Tour we made for the subject property we have been talking about all week. Below is the eBrochure we included with the tour in case you want to “flip” through the photos as opposed to watching the movie again.

If you would like to see the eBrochure full screen just double click on it, when you are finished just press the escape key.

You can see the layout and format of our actual tour by clicking here, funny enough, the exact house was also listed by another agent when the present residence bought it and you can see her tour here. Which one do you like better?

Have a great weekend!

Today is the final day I am going to post before and after photos of this house we have been using as an example all week. Again, it was an attractive impressive Estate, but not that well maintained. Our main goal (as you will hear me say over and over like a broken record) is that we do not market and promote properties, we market and promote LIFESTYLES.

A property is something you find in Mesquite, Texas (bring on the hate mail) – it is a roof over your head, a place to shower and cook your food, and sleep. Living on a golf course is a lifestyle, any luxury property of substance is a lifestyle. This client does not search for living space in terms of “how many bedrooms does it have?” – they search in terms of is it near the ocean for convenient access to their yacht, is it surrounded by beautiful mountains that you can view from every window or in this case, is it located on a golf course.

Needless to say, marketing these properties is a lot more than throwing up some photos of the front and each room from your $125.00 digital camera and calling it a day. It is a must to convey to the savvy buyer that this property is more than the sum of it’s parts. IT IS A LIFESTYLE. You also want to make an emotional connection with these shoppers that makes your listing stand out head and shoulders above the rest. You will see what I mean by this tomorrow when the video it posted.

So here we were, Jason and I at the end of a long photo shoot, wanting to capture some of the nice twilight glow coming from the windows of this beautiful home. The photo below is one of several we captured.

Nice enough, even better that what I see on the MLS for 90% of the homes listed for 5 million and less. However, meeting the minimum standard is NOT our business model and the person who is going to make an offer on this property deserves a bit of drama to help them see just how stunning the house can be. The positives for me is the nice warm glow illuminating from the windows, the negatives were (again) the low laying overgrown evergreen along the front, how some of the exterior lights gave off a greenish glow, the ill maintained driveway with grass growing between the cobble stones, I mean really, COME ON PEOPLE!!!

First of all, I wanted this to be a full page in our eBrochure so I was going to crop the photo from landscape to portrait, that would take care of a lot of what I saw as negatives. Secondly, I wanted an over the top dramatic sky that would totally make the colors jump off the page. My dad, in his 70’s HATED the final photo, but it resonated and emotionally connected with someone. This property was under contract in three days.

Dramatic? YES. Over the top? YES. But this buyer does not buy generic green beans at the grocery, and they EXPECT to be impressed when they are looking through the hundreds of mundane photos on REALTOR.com.

Are your photos memorable? Do they stand out?

Check back tomorrow for the movie (and eBrochure) that was produced for this property. Happy April Fools Day!

Hi again, here we are. Next day, same topic and same subject house. I will be less wordy and let the photos speak for them selves today. Now, we are in front of the house facing the sun we were dealing with a washed out sky and some unwanted shadowing in the front. As yesterdays photos, I wanted to bring out the richness in texture and color of the house exterior and also have an almost animated dream like feel to the sky. Again, in post production, Jason was able to work his magic and deliver. I truly enjoy getting to work with him and how he understands what I am asking for in the photos. As you can see below, he was able to provide exactly what I wanted.

As always, after I got the photos from him, I still wanted to push for MORE. Within a few seconds I got rid of the light by the tree in the lower left. We are selling a lifestyle here and properties of this substance do not let the front yard and garden area get so run down. I do not know what the personal story is behind the home owners neglecting the front with such poor landscaping (curb appeal – HELLO!!!) but I decided to take it upon myself. I put on my cyber gardening gloves and planted pansies all along the front drive. In the video you will see Friday, it is a quick pan and you only see it for a few seconds – but with my company name on it a low lying over grown evergreen was not acceptable.

My Mum would agree.

Here is the pool with an infinity line towards to the golf course, sun blaring down. I knew jason would take care of this as always and he did (see below) but then my OCD kicked in. All I could see was a hose at the end of the steps by the gate (far end) and the absolute horrible calcium build up along the tiles of the pool.

As we do with each photo, looking it over and over for anything that can be improved on, we got rid of the calcium build up on the tiles and the hose laying on the steps. That along with Jason’s keen eye for bringing out the color of the sky and stone work we were good to go!

Everything you have seen so far is relatively easy but necessary clean up in post production to make a photo the absolute best it can be. After we narrow down the photos by 60% we look through each one to see what needs to be done to improve it in anyway. Tomorrow I will go over some extremely dramatic changes that were made just for that – DRAMA – and it was very effective.

This is going to be fun, and you guys are going to enjoy it.

When making my Virtual Movie Tours, they are only going to be as good as the photographs. Additionally, after strolling through the MLS this weekend with one of my REALTOR friends, we were amazed at how many very ordinary photographs there were of extraordinary properties. Keeping in mind 80% of the time we work with properties that are one million or more – we were both surprised at how many million dollar listings had such bland photographs. The same photographs you would see on a $80,000 condo.

I have the privilege (and yes, it is a privilege) of working with two very talented photographers; Manasseh Lee and Jason Jones. This past week Jason and I had a project to do at The Enclave on the TPC Las Colinas Golf Course directly at the third hole. Listed just under two million, it was an extremely attractive property; moderately well maintained. While there were several highlights about the home – the one that struck me was the wonderful second story balcony where you could easily watch the PGA Tour Byron Nelson Championship without obstruction. The home was situated on a hill so that you might even be able to see the PGA Tour over spectator heads next to or in your pool. If you are a golf enthusiasts, this is priceless.

To me, every home has a story to tell – and that is how we approach our production. This week through my blogs I am going to share every thought process and conversation we have while photographing a property in hopes to see better photographs in the MLS. It should be fun for you guys to see before and after photos and hear the zaniness that goes on – but we never lose the focus that we are there to A) provide the REALTOR with 25 exceptional photographs that make this property stand out even if an identical property is for sale next door and B) create an emotional connection with the buyer that compels them to “must see” this property in person.

At the end of the week, after going over several photographs and what we did to hold your attention, I will show you the movie we created as the Virtual Movie Tour for MLS and REALTOR.com – and I welcome your feedback. In fact, I insist you give me feedback as your feedback is the only way we can improve our product and service!

First of all, we usually take three times the amount of photos needed. Maybe four. To get 25 good photographs you are going to need a pool of at least 100 to pick from. This takes time at the property and it takes time once we are back at our computers. Some people do not understand why we cannot download the photos and send them to them; “Why do I have to wait two days? When I take the photos I go home and download them and BAM, ready to upload to the MLS.”

Why is above.

Prior to this photography appointment Jason and I really talked about pushing the envelope with this property. Not just getting some good shots, but in post production, really brining out the spectacular lifestyle of golf course living. We were going to push these photos to almost Annie Leibovitz fantasy to show how enchanting living in a gated golf course can be, and (like all of our residential productions) it is not just a property, it is a lifestyle. Jason did an incredible job.

Above top, the west sun was blaring down on the back side of the house. It washed everything out and while it was a beautiful clear day I wanted to see more “richness” in the color of the lawn and sky. Also, the house had a wonderful exterior finish on it that was lost in the sunny photograph. In post production Jason was able to create a photo that was slightly enhanced, but also true to the structure and atmosphere. Later this week you will see some extremely altered photos made for dramatic effect – but this above is very mild. You have to admit, the lower photo is much more beautiful, eye catching and holds your attention as you imagine yourself living there.

Being an absolute control freak, I went in and took out the drain in the lower left of the photograph. To me it was distracting. False advertising? I think no more than what men or women do to get ready for a date. <GRIN>

Anytime this week, if anyone wants to send me one exterior photo of an active listing – I will pick a few and work some magic on them and post them Thursday (and send it back to you in case you want to use it), Friday I will post the movie we made from this photo session, it came out great and I cannot wait to share it with you!

1. Is all of Cascada for sale and…

2. if YES, how fast can I put one under contract?!

The Queen Bee of Cascada at Turtle Creek, Missy Woehr, has done it again and listed yet another of the beautiful properties in the lush community located in the epicenter of all things great about Dallas.

Tuscan inspired villa in the prestigious Cascada Turtle Creek community. 3340 Blackburn offers classic old world architecture with the luxury of today’s modern urban living. Design includes cascading staircases, hand-scraped hrdwds & intricate stone flooring, gourmet kitchen with granite countertops, balconies & outdoor patios, beautiful landscaping, gated community and private access to the Katy Trail.

Showings have been hopping, interested? I’d call today!

Rarely does such a truly stunning property become available in a city steeped in rich history. This is one.

Hyde Park Gardens, Bayswater, London W2 An elegant and substantial maisonette situated in this grand early 19th Century building on the north side of Hyde Park.

Yes, THE HYDE PARK – walking distance. Dreams do come true!

The property is largely laid out over the raised ground and first floors and benefiting from its own entrance perhaps has the feel of a low built house.

There are five beautiful principle rooms of majestic proportions, extensive bedroom and ancillary accommodation, air conditioning, south facing private garden leading directly onto communal gardens together with a separate mews house with staff quarters and garage parking for three/four cars. Total accommodation of 9,362 sq.ft. (870 sq.m.)

Listed at $23,905,573 USD – use the form below to email for further details.