Brokers cast their bids: real-estate agents align with acclaimed auction houses to move luxury lots.

• Author: Causey, Carrie
• Position: Statewide: BUSINESS NEWS FROM ACROSS NORTH CAROLINA

The 12,000-square-foot Lake Norman house, priced at $4.95 million, has been on the market for a year. That doesn't faze Cornelius real-estate agency owner Reed Jackson, who's hosting several dozen people at an open house on a sultry summer night. One might expect the place, owned by a Queen City insurance executive, to sell itself to the right multimillionaire looking for five bedrooms, seven fireplaces, a columned master bathtub encased in stone, an eight-seat entertainment theater with a 75-inch screen, a basement bar with a cellar for more than 150 bottles of wine, a resort-caliber pool and a gorgeous view of the state's biggest man-made lake. But Cornelius isn't Malibu. Jackson and his wife, Lori Ivester Jackson, brought in Rick Moeser, the Palm Beach-based Southeast regional manager of Christie's International Real Estate, to make the case for owning luxury property. Among Lake Norman's major brokers since it was formed in 1998, Ivester Jackson Distinctive Properties became an affiliate of Christie's Inc.'s real-estate arm in January. Though the New York-based auction house is better known for selling Rembrandts than real estate, combining its cachet with the local market knowledge of Ivester Jackson's 35 agents is accelerating growth, reflected in website viewings doubling this year, Jackson says. His agency remains independent but pays a fee to be associated with a brand that makes the phone ring--especially with buyers from outside the state making up 40% of North Carolina's luxury-home sales.

Hooking up with a glamorous name is among the latest strategies real-estate brokerages are using to set themselves apart. Christie's main competitor, New York-based Sotheby's Inc.'s realty division, has 750 offices in 52 countries, including Raleigh-based Hodge & Kittrell Inc. and about 10 other North Carolina affiliates. Naples, Fla.-based Premier Sotheby's International Realty LLC added two offices in the Charlotte region this year after studies showed an increasing number of wealthy families want to own homes in both Florida and North Carolina, spokeswoman Jama Dock says. Another specialist trading fancy homes, Chicago-based Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, has a luxury-property network of 200 affiliates in 30 countries, including about a dozen in North Carolina. Christie's --which entered residential real estate in 1995, about 20 years after Sotheby's--had an agreement with Charlotte-based Cottingham-Chalk & Associates Inc. that...