Each Friday, Robbie Briggs, president and CEO of Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty, writes about luxury, trends, business and more in the advertising pages of the Mansion section of The Wall Street Journal. Below is his letter of June 19, 2020.  FROM MY PERSPECTIVE Selling the new luxury For a time there, it looked like luxury had lost its luster. Over the last several years, luxury has been sold, hard, as a feature of almost everything. Goods universally thought of as truly luxurious — high-end handbags, sleek yachts, fine watches — have had to share the spotlight with nail polish, shoelaces and beer. Now, true luxury has come to mean other things. Space. Freedom. Sanctuary. Those also happen to be key components of a luxury home — and this pandemic we’re all navigating through has put all of that into high relief. We’ve been dealing in real luxury for 60 years and counting. We are the North Texas specialists in homes of architectural significance, of quality, of style. The same goes for our high-rises and ranches. Our properties are known as the very best in the market. We have sold them to and for celebrities, CEOs, sports stars, society leaders, executives, entrepreneurs, singles, grandparents, creatives, empty nesters, you name it — people of all kinds, for whom luxurious living is a vital part of who they are. It takes very special agents at this level. Ours adapt to any situation or need. They use time efficiently, because they know that yours is valuable. A luxury agent has a lot of experience in a market, and a critical understanding of pricing strategies. They also know how to interpret the flows of data that less-experienced agents will write off as information overload. (That information, by the way, could help you save or make a lot of money.) All of this makes me even more proud of who we are: a luxury real estate brokerage that has only ever sold luxury real estate. And, this year alone, we have sold some stunning, special properties, everything from a 10,000-square-foot Mediterranean manor in Highland Park to a 600,000-acre ranch in Nevada. Space? Freedom? Sanctuary? That’s real luxury now. -

Speaking of luxury, our Faisal Halum has just been ranked — again — as one of the top 1,000 agents in the entire country, per REAL Trends + Tom Ferry and its prestigious list called The Thousand. In 2019 alone, Faisal sold more than $85 million in luxury homes and high-rises. I’m bursting with pride, as are Faisal’s 400-plus agent colleagues at Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty. In a brokerage of bests, he is the best. Robbie Briggs President and CEO, Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty rbriggs@briggsfreeman.com