Look out estate agents, not only do you have to contend with a declining market, corruption scandals, bad press and a lack of buyers, but now a new force has entered the overseas real estate playground.
Carole Vorderman Overseas Homes.Yes, really.
Not content with hawking loans to misguided punters, the Sudoko queen is now flogging off-plan property in Florida, the Caribbean and Spain.
Often criticised for putting her name to everything from detox diets through to margarine, Vorderman has herself amassed a pretty substantial property portfolio. She owns around 20 houses in the UK, and revealed to the Telegraph that she made in excess of £700,000 profit on one property alone.
Whilst this will no doubt give her critics more ammunition, it isn't really any different from the recent crop of celebrity endorsements we have seen: Ian Botham for Viva Estates - and currently for ADH, Jack Nicklaus for Polaris World and so forth.
These celebrity endorsements, whilst not cheap, presumably offer the consumer a degree of confidence. Additionally a celeb such as Carole Vorderman has much to lose, reputation-wise (if not financially), should this partnership go south. A tarnished reputation is not conducive to earning future advertising dollars.
Anyway read the full Telegraph article
here. Visit Carole's rather nice looking website
here. Also a big hat tip to the eagle-eyed contributors of
Spanish Property Insight for digging this up.
More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mills_Mess
