HGTV’s “Selling New York” follows CORE agents as they navigate the country’s most competitive—and compelling—real estate market. Here’s our behind-the-scenes look at Episode #609, which first aired on December 13, 2012. For more SNY recaps, click here.
In this week’s episode of “Selling New York,” CORE broker Adrian Noriega is tasked with selling a colorfully designed and meticulously clean apartment in the Flatiron District. Although the apartment is picture perfect, Adrian’s seller, Phoebe, requests that no open houses be held. Faced with the challenge of getting potential buyers in the door through different marketing strategies, Adrian is up for the task of trying to get his client’s property sold at a premium price.
After agreeing to no open houses, Adrian gets to work on showing the apartment and makes sure that all guests take off their shoes, put on surgical booties to keep the apartment looking pristine, and even takes guests’ coffee at the door to avoid any messes. Although some buyers weren’t interested in the apartment’s views or the color-saturated living room with mod furniture, others absolutely loved the design aesthetic.
Weeks later, Adrian takes a ride to Phoebe’s home in New Jersey for an update on his progress with showings and happily presents an all-cash offer for $3.1M. Phoebe is pleased about the offer; however, Adrian suggests that he can get an even higher offer if Phoebe agrees to an open house. With some hesitation, she agrees to one open house and trusts Adrian’s expertise.
The open house goes well – with booties and all – and Adrian happily presents a higher offer to Phoebe. After all is said and done, the apartment sells for $3.375M, well over its original asking of $3.295M. Keep on reading for some exclusive behind-the-scenes information on what didn’t make it into last night’s episode of “Selling New York” and what happened after the cameras stopped rolling!
1) Selling New York seals the deal. Adrian met Phoebe at the right place, at the right time…in CORE’s Chelsea office. It turns out that Phoebe saw an episode of SNY and felt that CORE could represent her apartment in the right way. Adrian happened to receive the call and well, the rest is history.
2) Stage fright? Not quite. Throughout the episode viewers see Adrian asking guests to take off their shoes and sometimes put on booties to keep the apartment in ship shape. Adrian admits that everything went smoothly during his showings expect for when a couple brought coffee into the apartment. He plays it cool in the episode, but Adrian admits that taking people’s coffee made him beyond nervous since he didn’t want to messy anything in the apartment.
3) Hard work pays off. After achieving the highest resale price for a unit of its size at 15 West 20th Street, Adrian’s success caught the eye of another resident of the building. Within a week of Adrian listing the new exclusive, he received an offer for the full asking price and is currently in talks with another resident in the building who is looking to sell.
4) A TV worthy trophy. Not only was Phoebe’s apartment featured in this episode of SNY and The Wall Street Journal, but Adrian had the opportunity to show off the high-design space with Beth Stern for an episode of Mom Caves.
5) Color conquers. Adrian explained that when listing a property, most agents love showing off neutral palettes because potential buyers respond well to them. But in this case, the apartment’s colorful living and dining spaces actually played a large part in people putting offers down for the apartment. Adrian mentioned that even when potential buyers weren’t crazy about those spaces, there were always accents to the apartment that they loved.