Why Interests and Occupation Matter More Than Income in Luxury Real Estate Marketing

Most luxury agents start with staging. Bent Danholm, founder of Danholm Collection, starts with a question: who, specifically, is going to buy this house? Not a demographic bracket. Not a net worth range. A real, detailed profile of a person, their job, their family structure, their hobbies, their commute, their lifestyle. And he says the data point most agents skip is also the one that tends to make or break the campaign.

That data point is interests. “Everybody looks at finances and income,” Danholm says. “But they might not pay too much attention to what kind of interests these people might have, unless it’s pretty obvious, like a golf course or lakefront property.” Beyond the obvious, he argues, there are layers of preference, dining habits, social patterns, nightlife, and how people spend their weekends that shape whether a buyer connects with a property before they ever walk through the door.

Before any marketing assets are created, before staging, before video, before a single ad is placed, Danholm and his team study the property and its community to construct what he calls a buyer avatar. That means mapping out likely family structure, net worth, income, professional background, typical commute, and lifestyle preferences specific to the home. The second data point most agents overlook, he says, is occupation. “Which also influences what they might want to buy,” he notes. A tech executive relocating from out of state has different priorities than a medical professional or an investor. Getting that right changes not just where you market, but how you frame the property.

Once the avatar is built, his team purchases targeted demographic data lists, typically $2,000 to $4,000, so they can reach that specific profile directly rather than broadcasting into general real estate channels and hoping the right person sees it. The practical result Danholm sees is fewer showings per listing, but a higher proportion of qualified buyers walking through the door. “That’s what our sellers actually want,” he says. “They want their home sold, but they don’t want 50 people walking through their home every week.”

His sellers also tend to come to him after failing with other agents. He estimates roughly 90% of his business comes from expired or canceled listings, properties that sat on the market because the price was off, the marketing was broad, or both. “You would be surprised to see how many million-dollar homes are marketed with pictures taken from a phone, with no video,” he says. “And if you can’t be bothered to get the marketing assets right, you’re probably not bothered to figure out who you should market it to.”

Even Danholm acknowledges the method isn’t infallible. When a well-priced, well-located home still isn’t moving, the first question he asks is whether the buyer profile was built correctly. “Did we make a mistake in the buyer avatar? Are we actually approaching the right people for this property?” If showings are happening but no offers are coming, that’s a pricing signal. If interest is low across the board, the avatar may need revisiting, and with it, the channels used to reach buyers.

The other non-negotiable is pricing. “You can target and market as much as you like to the right buyer, if your price is off, they’re not going to buy anyway,” he says. His listing agreements are capped at three months: if a property hasn’t sold, something in the approach needs to change. His longest transaction in the past 18 months took 94 days, including a deal that collapsed due to buyer financing.

In a market where luxury inventory is growing, largely because sellers are overpricing and agents are under-marketing, Danholm’s approach is a direct response to a specific problem. Homes sitting for 200, 300, or 400 days aren’t sitting because buyers aren’t out there. They’re sitting because no one figured out who the buyers were before spending money trying to reach them. For sellers evaluating agents, the question worth asking isn’t how many listings an agent has or how big their social following is. It’s whether they can articulate, clearly and specifically, who is going to buy your home, and what evidence they’re using to support that answer.