Bob Fisher is taking a famous bank robber's advice as he tries to sell his home without a real estate agent.
"Willie Sutton, when asked why he robbed banks, said because that is where the money is," Fisher said.
And Fisher knows he has to find the people with the right kind of money to move his mountaintop manse.
The 12,500-square-foot Sagee Manor outside of Highlands, N.C., has seven bedrooms, a wine cellar, two offices and 10 fireplaces on 22 mountaintop acres. It is landscaped by one of the world's experts in English gardens. The home's white oak beams and paneling are hand-shaped, and its views take in surrounding valleys in a 360-degree circumference.
Price? $17.9 million.
That exceeds most of Atlanta's top-end primary home prices, already bruised by the recession, and the second home market has suffered even worse, the National Association of Realtors says.
A review of million-dollar-plus home sales by The Atlanta Journal Constitution last year showed deep discounts and slow sales. Georgia's highest-priced home, a $45 million Forsyth County mansion, sold for $11.5 million last year. Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank sold an $8 million Buckhead mansion for $3.6 million after a three-year wait.
"I wish [Fisher] the very best," said Jenny Pruitt, founder of Atlanta Fine Homes Sotheby's International Realty, "but I think it's going to take experts who know how to really make it happen."
"Even if I didn’t own this real estate company, I would say that would be a difficult ‘for sale by owner,' " she said.
A vacation home at that price is only for a select few among the select few.
Fisher is confident.
"People who know me and the things I have done are not betting against me," he said.
Fisher succeeded at law, moving from a top firm to begin his own firm. He bought up radio bandwidth and resold it during the telecom boom.
He and his wife, Cathy, built the Tudor stone-and-beam Highlands mansion during the 1990s when the economy was rolling like a valley-bound boulder. They retired there and helped start, fund and run a $15 million art center, the Bascom, in Highlands.
He came out of early retirement to run an Atlanta company that makes industrial materials-handling machines. Fisher's return to business left them little time to split among Highlands, Atlanta and their Sea Island home, so they chose to sell Sagee Manor. He wondered, why not take a shot at selling it himself?
His move was not inspired by the idea of saving some bucks on realtor's fees, but rather by the idea that he can reach the rarefied number of potential buyers better than a real estate company in this time of lean businesses and advertising budgets.
"We have engaged about $250,000 in advertising over a three-month time," including The New York Times and International Herald Tribune's special edition for the Cannes International Film Festival, Fisher said.
He is offering a $250,000 finder's fee to anyone who brings him a buyer, and he has paid for a website in multiple languages, including Chinese and Russian, with videos of the home and region. Fisher is going on a four-week road trip to high-dollar towns such as Dallas, Aspen and New York City to make personal pitches.
"I am ready to put on the clown suit, if necessary," he said.
"It's kind of a multilevel marketing plan, and no real estate agent would be able to do that," Fisher said.
"If you reach the right people, selling it won't be hard," he predicted.
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