Jed Lewin of Triplemint Real Estate had his best year in New York City sales yet. Watch as he shares tales of navigating the challenging and unpredictable real estate market of 2021, and how he helped his clients reach their real estate goals no matter the hurdle.
Hi. I’m glad you’re here. It’s actually perfect timing because I was just about to start looking back over some of my absolute favorite deals of 2021 and I’d love to show you some of them. Let’s see what we’ve got.
2 Fifth Avenue
2 Fifth Avenue, this is one of my favorite deals of the year and one of the sexiest apartments I’ve ever sold in my career. I helped my clients buy this place back in 2019, and they called me in April to discuss potentially listing and while the market was just beginning to come back. This is one of the premier buildings on the Gold Coast of Lower Fifth Avenue. Prime Greenwich Village never goes out of style. We priced it well. You can see the renovation is impeccable and we had multiple full ask all cash offers. In the first week. I sold it well over the asking price for three million dollars.
101 West 12th Street, Greenwich Village
This was another one of my favorite deals of the year. This Greenwich Village gem was my smallest deal of the year by far, but in many ways it was also the most satisfying. The seller had been living in Asia and needed to sell this property to move on to another phase of life. The apartment was listed with another brokerage for six months and had suffered several price drops and gotten zero offers. As soon as I walked in the first time, I knew why. The place was a complete wreck. I convinced her to invest in herself. We got the unit staged and painted, put in some beautiful furniture and really got it spruced up to show it in its best light. We listed it two weeks later at a higher price. Interest right away was off the charts and we got multiple offers, conducted a successful bidding war and we sold it four percent over the asking price. And the best part to me was the trust that she placed in me without us ever actually having met.
60 West 20th Street
60 West 20th Street, the Kashmere building. I loved working on this deal because my clients were so fun to work with. A very good buddy of mine from when I used to practice law called me up to say that he and his law partner, both of whom had given up their New York homes during the pandemic, needed to buy a tear to be close to their New York office. We started out looking at new construction in a busy part of Nomad, and they just weren’t impressed with the amount of space. We finally found this absolutely stunning loft in a building built in 1890 to these 14 foot ceilings and huge open spaces could not be any more different from new construction. These guys love the apartments so much they were even able to negotiate, including the furniture with the sale, and they basically just had to bring their toothbrushes.
173 Riverside Drive
173 Riverside Drive. This deal was really interesting, and I learned a lot throughout the process. Now the buyers were referred to me by a dear friend of mine who trusted me enough to recommend that her boss use me for this transaction. Unlike a lot of clients where we have to sort of look at everything on the very, very first day of looking, we found a stunning diamond in the rough and I do mean rough. This massive prewar apartment on the Upper West Side had not been lived in for almost a decade, which is extremely rare in New York. It was basically a ghost apartment. Didn’t even have a kitchen. Did you know that you cannot get traditional mortgage financing without a working kitchen? It was time to get creative. Now, luckily, my buyers had some flexibility and we were able to close in cash and then apply leverage to the property afterwards. They’re now in the process of building their dream home.
400 West End Avenue
400 West End Avenue, Wexford. Now talk about a study in contrast. Unlike the previous deal, where I’d only taken those buyers out one time with these clients, I’d been working with them for a year and a half. We probably looked at every single suitable classic six on the Upper West side below two and a half million dollars. We easily saw over 50 apartments and had lost several bidding wars, and the buyers were starting to get despondent. Serendipitously, a unit in a building that they had absolutely loved the year before came to market and it was the same unit they loved on a higher floor. We engaged immediately, got them an amazing deal after some very aggressive negotiating, and they are now building their forever home.It’s really interesting working through the process of doing a complete gut renovation with them, and the coolest part to me is they had such a great experience working with me that now I’m working with their daughter and her family.
4 East 95th Street
4 East 95th Street. This Carnegie Hill penthouse was easily one of my favorite deals of the year. First, one of the attorneys who I work with on many deals referred me to the buyer, and that’s special in and of itself. And then I decided to bring a colleague of mine with me to the listing pitch to leverage his Upper East Side co-op experience and really just to see how another very successful agent conducts business differently than I do. Now, the history of this special home was matched only by its uniqueness and its amazing outdoor space. This apartment was like a country cottage in the sky, and the terrace was actually bigger than the apartment itself. I knew we had to get it some press and had it featured in the New York Times and several other sites. Thanks to our awesome PR and marketing teams at Triplemint, we sold this home at a great price and the seller is now a dear friend.
Wow, what an amazing year this has been. I am so thankful for these and for all of my clients. And thanks to you for being a part of this year in review, I’d love to work with you in 2022. Happy New Year, everyone!
To work with Jed Lewin, contact him at 917.609.0466 or via email at jed.lewin@theagencyre.com.
