Daniel Blatman of Triplemint Real Estate broke records in New York City real estate more than usual during 2021. Listen to his stories of 6 month long negotiations, hoisting hot tubs onto a roof, and getting the deal done.
Hi, I’m Daniel Blatman with Triplemint, and these are some of my favorite deals from 2021.
105 West 73rd Street
Right now, this is one of my favorites, this is an apartment at 105 West 73rd Street. It was a beautiful, beautiful home. Actually, it was one of the apartments that I would have been excited to live in myself. It’s a no doorman, two bedroom and one and a half bathroom, immaculate home. It actually had window air conditioning and washer dryer, all the priorities except for the window air conditioning. What was really special to me about this one was the way that it flowed. I sell a lot based off of floor plans and finding a way to build the life inside of the home. Now in this one, there was a separate kitchen and dining room, which also could have been a den. It could have been an office. And then the bedrooms were separated by this really sensible foyer where you could actually have a little table and some flowers. Thanks to the questionable nature of timing and the questionable nature of having netting and scaffolding around the apartment, we had weeks of showings with crickets after each one. Then finally, in week four, the offers came flooding in. None were close to asking as the COVID market was still questionable and with a lot of follow up as brokers don’t like to answer messages for feedback, I was able to apply enough pressure to one group by enacting the fear of loss. They came in with a full ask all cash offer, which encouraged another group to come up, and my clients were able to pick the strongest application for board approval. They had been in the building for a long time and wanted to also make sure that they were leaving the building on a good note and were very excited to have the opportunity to pick the new neighbors.
225 Central Park West
What do we have next? This one is 225 Central Park West. I originally pitched this listing in February of 2020, and the buyers were actually moving to Soho at the time from the Upper West Side. At that time, the sellers decided to list the apartment with the live-in broker thinking showings would be easier after months on the market. Their feedback had been that the kitchen needed to be gut renovated and that the market in the Upper West Side for two bedrooms was just slow. After another brokerage change, they finally asked me to come and meet for another opinion about what to do. I recommended we make some very simple changes. We touched up the kitchen cabinets to give them more of a hand finish. We changed the pendant light that hung over the island for one that was more modern and flush with the ceiling, which actually raised the ceiling in the kitchen. We also use their current furniture and repositioned it in all rooms to define seating areas and create a different life flow. Once they listed with us, the sellers went from having one showing per week max, to four at a minimum after four weeks of showings, with multiple offers coming in either 10% of the asking price, you know, we finally caught the right buyer. After some back and forth and a little FOMO, they eventually came to within 2% of the asking price, which mind you was the same asking price that the other brokers had it on the market for. These sellers are now going to be enjoying their new life in California with the extra money that they received from this apartment due to the strong offer and a very competitive marketplace.
110 Duane Street
What’s another exciting story? Definitely this penthouse at 110 Duane Street. I learned so much from this transaction. We negotiated this deal for six months. Whenever I work with a buyer, we always look at what the apartment is asking and what it’s worth and then what my client is willing to pay for it based on what they would do to it. We did know that my client was going to need to renovate this, and because of that, we started at about 20 percent off of the asking price, which was low but reasonable.So after six months of market updates, we eventually agreed on a price that was actually just about 7% above our initial offer. Then the next fun part began. The apartment had a terrace which had a leak to the downstairs neighbor, a hot tub that needed a new motor and a lot more. The building was threatening to sue the owner for negligence and to have the roof fixed, all paid by the seller by working tirelessly. We learned the roof was going to need to be redone and also the terrace was going to have to be torn apart at the owner or buyer’s expense after bringing in multiple landscape architects. We learned the terrace would cost around 150 thousand dollars to redo and that the hot tub, should it need to be replaced, would now need to go through the Building’s approval, get hoisted onto the roof from a crane. And since building codes changed, we’d have to have solar panels go on the roof to offset the new higher electrical usage for the hot tubs. All this took us one more month to negotiate, to get the seller to give us a credit for the buyer to do a full rehab of the terrace. We also had the seller put money in escrow for the building to pay for the roof work, plus a 20% surcharge, knowing the commercial roofer probably underbid the project. We also got the building to agree that should the roof cost more money, the buyer wouldn’t be responsible for any additional fees because it was now summer and the terrorists looked amazing. We had some other offer threats. We ended up having to fend off another offer, and we knew the likelihood of another buyer actually being OK with the uncertainty of this process, all the additional costs, etc. was low. We didn’t want to take any risks with that and said we were able to increase our offer by less than 3% and win back the apartment and have the sellers sign the contract that same day. Then the renovation began, but that’s another story.
This is my time to say thank you to all of my clients, Triplemint, and my team. And thank you very much for your resilience, working through every experience in 2021. This has been an excellent year in life and personal growth, as well as the resilience of each one of us and the resilience of New York City. The pleasure is all mine. I look forward to seeing you all in 2022.
To work with the Daniel Blatman, contact him at 917.297.8575 or via email at daniel.blatman@theagencyre.com.
