Rain family, this one's personal. A story about a listing I lost, a buyer who won, and the real difference between an agent who chases the sale and one who's actually looking out for you.
I believe if you're going to land in someone's mailbox, you'd better be worth keeping. No trash. No spam. It must be "fridge-worthy." That's my mission behind my direct mail pieces. Make it beautiful, make it art, make it unmistakably me. So when my phone rang with a family in the middle of the worst kind of clean-out, that's exactly where they'd seen my name. On the fridge.
A son had passed suddenly. His mother and her family (lovely people, out of towners, in from Chicago and knowing next to nothing about how a New York City co-op actually works) were left clearing out his apartment and trying to figure out what came next. They called about a selling strategy and a pricing analysis.
I leaned into the data. I knew this Clinton Hill building intimately, having closed a record-setting sale there a month earlier. My number came in around $1.15 to $1.2 million, priced a touch conservative on purpose. The meeting felt warm. We talked jazz. We talked life. But the number scared them. They were picturing something closer to $890,000, and a grieving mother heard "$1.1 to $1.2 million" as a threat, not good news. Months later, they went with someone else. I imagine that agent low-balled them to get the listing.
I watched the listing hit at $890,000 with an agent I didn't recognize. I called him within minutes. My buyer, patient for years, made an all-cash offer above asking at $925,000, no inspection, signing inside three days. When the listing agent mentioned a weekend open house and a wave of inquiries, I gave him a 24-hour window to close it out. He did.
This isn't a story about pricing strategy. It's a story about fiduciary duty. My buyer walked away with roughly $300,000 in built-in equity on day one because she worked with someone watching the market for her, not just angling for a signature.
Full story, with the pricing breakdown and the negotiation details, is on my website. Appreciate this community always — would love to hear if you've had a listing teach you more than the ones you closed.
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