Chris Toland of Triplemint Real Estate had one of the most interesting years in his New York City career. Listen in on the triumphs and tribulations that came with selling homes in an unprecedented real estate market.
Hi, my name is Chris Toland. 2021 was my first year as an agent with Triplemint and also turned out to be a pretty great year. Let us take a look back at some of the highlights and what’s in this book here.
17 Grand Street
17 Grand Street, I love this apartment. This was a beautifully renovated co-op on a high floor with a large terrace on the Lower East Side. It had light views, space, everything the sellers had tried previously to sell during the pandemic, but no luck. They did want to sell, but they were leery of being that listing that sits and sits. So I actually had them enroll in the Triplemint pre-market program so we could test the waters in the market without starting the dreaded days on the market counter. We did actually have a few bites through that program, and I could feel that the market was gaining strength, but we didn’t actually get any offers. Then one day a letter came in the mail from a young guy in the neighborhood who had seen it online when it had been listed previously, asking the sellers if they would ever consider selling again, and would they please contact him if they did so. We called him, he came over and he fell in love. We were in the pre market program and we were able to use that as leverage, and we told him that we would not negotiate on the asking price without putting it back on the open market. But we would sell to him if he agreed to pay the full asking price, which he did. The sellers were very happy, the buyer was very happy. This was in the spring before things got really crazy, so if we had put that apartment back on the open market, he certainly would have had to compete for it.
300 West 122nd Street
300 West 122nd Street, This one is fantastic. I had some buyers coming in from Boston. They were referred to me by some past clients and when they made the referral, my client asked to keep them in mind if I see anything good, they might like to get a place in the city for themselves at some point. Now, originally, the Boston folks had been coming looking for something kind of small and inexpensive. It was really going to be sort of a crash pad for them. For years, people have asked me where the new hot area is right now. It’s Morningside Heights and South Harlem. So many beautiful pre-war buildings, but also a ton of new development. Anyway, we didn’t have a ton of luck in our search for the pit of terror, but we kept walking past this new development at 300 West 122nd and it looked very interesting. So one day we thought we’d check it out, even though it was above what they had originally wanted to spend. We were amazed by the prices, which were lower than all of the surrounding new developments. The quality is gorgeous. Tons of amenities. Beautiful finishes and great floor plans. These clients bought it pretty much right on the spot. There was a ton of energy in the room. So much traffic you could just feel that we were not the only ones who are having this revelation about this building. So then they went home and they told their friends in New Jersey about it. The friends that had referred them, suddenly their “at some point” turned into “right now”, and they came out the next weekend and also bought one pretty much right there on the spot. For a while, I was the only broker who had sold to.
69 Fifth Avenue
69 Fifth Avenue. What a journey this was. This family is really at the top of my list in terms of favorite clients. I worked with them many times over a bunch of years, and this year it was their youngest daughter’s turn to buy her first apartment. She is fairly gentle by nature and said at the outset that she could not see herself getting into a bidding war. It would just be too stressful. Unfortunately, between market conditions and the product she wanted, which was a two bedroom, two bath downtown, that was not going to be easy. She wound up bidding on five different apartments and lost them all. We actually got an accepted offer on one of them, but then we learned in due diligence that a building was going to be built just outside the bedroom window, so she withdrew. Then we came to this one. It’s big, it’s nicely renovated and has a washer dryer. The location was ideal, and best of all, there were no offers on it. It was one of those cases where we were kind of like, why is this available? The only thing we could think of was that it looked out onto 14th Street, so maybe we thought it was noisy, but honestly, it’s really super quiet. So I kind of shrugged and said, maybe it’s just been waiting for you just to ensure maximum buyer anxiety. Though we wound up closing on the very day that her loan commitment was set to expire at four p.m. but all’s well that ends well, and she was thrilled.
425 West 50th Street
425 West 50th Street. This place is stunning. I got a call from a client saying that her cousin was coming to town to look for a rental. Now I’m really more of a sales agent, but I do some rentals generally only on the landlord side. But I agreed to call him and see what he needed. I figured I would probably refer him out to a colleague. It turns out they wanted to rent a place in New York because they wanted to have a place to stay while they shopped for a place to buy, and they had a pretty big budget. So taking that call turned out to be a pretty good thing to do. They didn’t care for any of the rental options, so they decided to skip right to the purchase. They came out for the first time and wanted to see a lot. I usually don’t like to show more than six in one day because stuff starts to blend together after that. But they said no load up the schedule. So we saw 10 in one day and 8 in the next. And this was in that week of July where it was about 400 degrees with the insane humidity, but they were troopers. We had a blast because they don’t live here. They were a little uncertain about location. We were looking at Upper West, Midtown, Chelsea, Flatiron, Gramercy… A few trips later, we saw this one and I could tell right away that they loved it. It really is quite stunning. The one feature they had said they wanted from the beginning was to know they were in New York. Well, apart from the gorgeous inside, this has a huge terrace with incredible midtown skyline and river views. Check. They shifted focus, and they were really this close to buying something else in a much nicer location, but the apartment itself paled in comparison. Then at the last second, they hit the brakes and said, let’s revisit that other one. When I called the broker, they had an offer. All of a sudden, every article you were reading was about the luxury market coming back strong. The borders had opened. Foreign buyers were back. So nothing makes people want something more than when someone else wants it. So my buyer stepped up and he got it. They are super excited and I really can’t wait to see what they do with it.
2021 was a fantastic year and I would just like to say I’m eternally grateful to everyone at Triplemint. It’s been a pleasure to be here. And more than that, to my customers and clients and everyone who I had a chance to work with this year, thank you. I’m looking forward to seeing what 2022 has in store for all of us. Happy New Year!
To work with the Chris Toland, contact him at347.645.3976 or via email at chris.toland@theagencyre.com.
