Boston brokerage firm Bushari Group Real Estate has come under fire as of late for a website built to attract clients from Millennium Tower, the highly anticipated luxury condo skyscraper, currently under construction smack dab in the middle of Downtown Crossing. The reason for the backlash, sources say, is that Bushari’s website, MillenniumTower.com, bears a striking resemblance to MillenniumTowerBoston.com, the site built by the building’s developer, Millennium Partners.
“It’s one of the most modern bait and switch tactics I’ve ever seen,” one Boston real estate professional told BostInno in an email. The source added that Bushari’s website is a “smart idea except they represented themselves as the building and now they’re suffering blowback.”
Did Bushari in fact attempt to market themselves as Millennium Tower? Elad Bushari, the firm’s co-founder, says that certainly wasn’t the intention.
Bushari explains in a statement to BostInno:
Since our purchase of MillenniumTower.com we notified the Millennium Tower Developer, Millennium Partners, of our purchase, and met with their team to discuss the website. We followed the developer’s marketing team’s requirements in order to differentiate our website’s look and feel from the developers in order not to confuse the public.
The next logical question: Would Bushari’s website confuse someone who wasn’t familiar with the situation?
Here’s Millennium Partners’ MillenniumTowerBoston.com:
Here’s Bushari’s MillenniumTower.com
Bushari says the firm “strategically utilizes premium domain names such MillenniumTower.com, bostonrealestate.com, and others which are still in development, in order to provide our customers with the most up to date information and to generate leads to our agents,” adding: “It is against our ethical belief and our company’s culture to mislead the public in anyway.”
MillenniumTower.com and MillenniumTowerBoston.com, while very similar, are not identical. “Furthermore,” Bushari says, “our company’s logo and a full disclosure are displayed on every page.”
© 2015 BUSHARI GROUP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. MILLENNIUMTOWER.COM IS OWNED AND OPERATED BY BUSHARI GROUP REAL ESTATE, A MASSACHUSETTS REAL ESTATE INDEPENDENT BROKERAGE NOT AFFILIATED WITH MILLENNIUM PARTNERS. THE INFORMATION PROVIDED ON THIS WEBSITE IS DEEMED RELIABLE BUT IS SUBJECT TO ERRORS AND OMISSIONS AND MAY CHANGE AT ANY TIME WITHOUT PRIOR NOTICE. PRIVACY POLICY
“We have had an overwhelmingly positive response from the public in our ability to keep our customers updated and informed about Boston luxury properties,” says Bushari.
BostInno has reached out to Millennium Tower’s Boston sales office, as well as the developer’s public relations team, for comment. If we hear back, we’ll update the post.
