 
Developer Louis R. Cappelli thinks it”™s time to change his company”™s sales methods and reach out to potential buyers in a slow market for Westchester luxury residences.
Realtor Gregory S. Rand thinks it”™s time for homebuyers and sellers to emerge from their “caves” and show the hard times are over in a revived economy.
The developer”™s need and the real estate broker”™s drive have brought together Cappelli Enterprises Inc. and Rand Development Marketing Group in a sales and marketing partnership announced last week in White Plains.
The setting was the downtown Main Street sales center for The Residences at The Ritz-Carlton Westchester and a formal kickoff for condo sales in the 400-foot-high, glass-sheathed Tower Two of Cappelli”™s approximately $600 million Renaissance Square development. Of the 170 luxury units in the second tower that opened about six months ago, about 30 are occupied and 53 were pre-sold to buyers who could not be accommodated in the first tower to open at The Ritz in 2007.
In the recession, though, wealthy buyers no longer stream into the sales center, prompting Cappelli to change course by closing his company”™s sales operations there, staffed by five to six persons, and turn to an outside real estate company with a growing reputation.
Appreciated by Cappelli as “a human dynamo,” Rand is managing partner of a 25-year-old, family owned company that in April acquired a regional competitor, Wolff Century 21, along with a new name and national brand affiliation as Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty. Rand Realty has more than 800 sales associates in 20 offices serving Westchester, Rockland and Orange counties.
The new partner also will be sales and marketing agent for the Valhalla-based developer”™s 212-unit Trump Tower in White Plains, 192-unit Trump Plaza in New Rochelle and the 56-acre, 147-unit Trump Park Residences in Yorktown, where Rand said 40 to 50 units are unsold.
Cappelli said he expected condo prices in the Ritz tower to be lowered about 10 percent from the initial offering. Rand said special prices, designed to jump-start his company”™s drive to sell 30 units at the Ritz in 30 days, will be in the mid-$600,000 range for a one-bedroom to $890,000 for a two-bedroom, with the highest-priced condos available at about $2 million.
Cappelli said opportune buyers of luxury residences now can get in “when the market has huge upside potential ”¦ Of the 900,000-some people in Westchester County, there”™s a huge market out there once we get the message out.”
Rand offered this optimistic message: “The winter”™s over. We”™ve all survived something we”™re going to look back on, the Great Depression of 2008.” The sales launch for the Ritz tower coincides with “the revival of the economy,” he said.
