If you’re like most people, you have trouble seeing past what’s in front of you when it comes time to look for a home to buy. What are the things that are most distracting? Here’s a short- and obvious- list:

• Personal photos
• Other personal items- diplomas, knickknacks, etc
• Dirty areas of the house
• Clutter
• Flaking paint

The hardest thing, really, after helping people like you for 20 years, is finding ways to get you vision, to help you see through the apartment as it is, and towards the home you want to live in. To give you the ability to see into the future.

So the big question, then, is this: What Is That Kind of Vision Worth?

How do you help people see what an apartment will look like when it’s in the “Before” state? Before a renovation is completed, for instance?

This brings us to our deal of the month, a sale where we brought the buyers to the table:

• The Location: 70th and West End Avenue.
• The asking price: $2.295mm
• Time on the market? 6 months for one stint, followed by another month.

Why didn’t anyone pull the trigger? The apartment needed everything. And people were having a lot of trouble envisioning the end product. So how did we get our customers over the hump?

Providing Vision

First, we knew that they wanted to take on a project. In fact, we had targeted this apartment when first came on the market in July of 2022. Before we could get far in a negotiation my buyers’ sale of their West Coast home was sidetracked.

When we finally regrouped early in 2023, the apartment had a deal that was floundering. So we had an opening to put our deal together. The only thing keeping my buyers from going full steam ahead was vision.

The buyers wanted to create three bedrooms plus an office. And they were having trouble understanding how to do it. Luckily, I had friends in the building who had already done the renovation my customers wanted to do! I texted my friends one afternoon to see if we could take a look at the renovation.

And alacazam- POOF! We had the “after” vision for them. Within a week, we had agreed on a price. And our deal would have closed much sooner, but there were some permits to close out.

My buyers will begin their renovation in the coming days, with the design, contractor, and confidence they need to move ahead! But most importantly, they had the vision to move forward in the first place.

So again, my question- What is that kind of vision worth? We’ll try, though it is very hard to put a price tag on it. After being on the market for 6+ months, we negotiated a deal that was about $50,000 lower than what we were thinking in Summer 2022. So they saved that much off the bat. But this is more attributable to good luck than vision.

Next- what if they had had to renew their lease at an exhorbitant price? How much extra rent would they have had to pay? Another $50,000 over 6-12 months? Money that they could have been applying to a home they owned…

And even worse, would they have had to buy into a more competitive market in the Fall or Spring when new inventory comes online? How much more would they have had to pay? Another $50-100k? It’s hard to know.

More important than anything, they would not have bought the apartment at all without being able to see the final product. I can’t overempasize this point. How do you quantify value, when the alternative is no action? What would be the impact on their lives without a home that was in their budget- that they loved?

For this deal of the month, I can only speculate exactly how much my customers saved, but I know this- they are excited to begin their project- and create the exact home they want. And to make that kind of launching pad- I think it’s priceless. In all the best ways.