The Townhouse Expert Advantage

This townhouse’s unique challenge:

This 19-foot wide townhouse on Manhattan’s West 98th Street was built 68-feet deep, with a 3-story extension. While filled with beautiful details, its vacant floor-through on the parlor level provided limited space for a buyer to move into. Its six additional rent-stabilized (RS) apartments produced modest income. As a result, this house supported very limited bank financing.

Our team’s innovative strategy:

Representing the out-of-state sellers, Dexter suggested that they provide mortgage financing to complete the transaction. A solution the sellers had not considered or even known possible, they crunched the numbers with Dexter, received approval on all ends, and happily accepted a top market price.

This townhouse’s unique challenge:

These West 100th Street owners approached Dexter for advice. They were tired of being landlords and had recently become empty nesters. They wondered about creating a condo of their multi-unit home, leaving a problem tenant as a renter, or simply selling. After extensive research, Dexter presented their probable financial results from either decision and recommended another course of action altogether.

Our team’s innovative stategy:

Following his advice, they decided to sell – but only if able to achieve a top price. To reach that goal, Dexter and his team of relocation and legal experts helped them buy out the entrenched tenant to maximize the house’s value for a single-family buyer. This resulted in an all-time record sale for the West 100s neighborhood.

This townhouse’s unique challenge:

This lovely double townhouse featured an owner’s duplex across the 32-foot span of both buildings on the ground and second floors. Despite this magnificent and highly desirable feature, this coveted West 68th Street location sat on the market for months under another exclusive broker.

Our team’s innovative solution:

Always alert to seeking out the right property to fit our premier buyers’ profiles, Dexter suggested that this property would fit well into the portfolio of a repeat buyer. Within days Dexter was at the seller’s door with his qualified buyer. As he suspected, it was a perfect match – the sale was underway almost immediately. The relieved seller was also happily surprised with a top-dollar offer.

This townhouse’s unique challenge:

This townhouse on West 102nd Street had been gut renovated in the 1960s. While it boasted a stunning garden and a suitable owner’s unit, it also had five, low-paying rental units. Typically, this house would have sold for a modest price to an investor, rather than an end-user (that is, someone who would make their home in the house).

Our team’s innovative solution:

Dexter understood the up-side in this offering and found an appreciative buyer — one he’d assisted twice before in Upper West Side transactions and who was not intimidated by the rent-stabilized units. With more than he ever expected to pocket from the transaction, the owner happily relocated to warmer climates. As a footnote, the new buyer successfully relocated all the tenants and created a beautiful single-family home.

This townhouse’s unique challenge:

This handsome, five-story, 20-foot townhouse on West 78th Street with a four-story extension, offered an owner’s garden duplex or potential triplex. However, it had three rent-stabilized (RS) units and one single-room-occupancy (SRO) unit, which intimidated most buyers. Even so, the beautiful original detail throughout the building, combined with its location, spelled future value for the right buyer.

Our team’s innovative solution:

While representing the seller, Dexter identified a pre-qualified, repeat buyer from Vandenberg’s own Premier Buyer’s Service, the largest pool of West Side townhouse buyers. The clincher was convincing a buyer that this was truly a diamond in the rough and well worth a premium price. Buyers need to understand, and not be intimidated by, RS and SRO units. In just a matter of weeks, the seller had his asking price. By using Owner Occupancy Proceedings and negotiated buyouts the new buyer obtained additional space for his own use, successfully creating a stunning owner’s unit.

This townhouse’s unique challenge:

This handsome, bow-front, five-story Riverside Park block townhouse had great potential but was saddled with stabilized and SRO tenancies. After this townhouse stagnated under several different brokers, the owners ultimately hired Vandenberg.

Our team’s innovative solution:

The new sales strategy involved a mint renovation and expansion of the south garden owner’s triplex. When complete, the owner’s triplex had as much square footage as some single-family townhouses, while still enjoying rental income from the top two floors. As some potential buyers were intimidated by taking on stabilized units, Vandenberg rented the triplex with an option to buy. The renter loved living there and soon exercised this option. Vandenberg closed the sale for $4.75 million, a great price for a Riverside block townhouse with four regulated tenancies.

This townhouse’s unique challenge:

This estate was referred to Dexter by a nearby owner on Manhattan Avenue who had observed Dexter’s sale of six other townhouses in a two-block radius, which transformed this sleepy neighborhood at 105th Street near Central Park into a sought-out location with prices at two and three times the previous levels.

Dexter met with, and gained the trust of, each of the four heirs to this 17-foot, single-family townhouse. While the property was an outstanding one, the market was so slow that the executors had little hope for an expeditious sale.

Our team’s innovative solution:

Relying on his list of premier buyers and their references, Dexter found qualified buyers and guided them through an off-again-on-again negotiation. Dexter’s expertise as a dealmaker paid off as he helped the buyer and executors to keep up with their communications through a number of unexpected obstacles. At the end of the day, this Manhattan Avenue property sold at a price lauded by neighbors.

This townhouse’s unique challenge:

Originally, the owners of this West 70th Street townhouse came to Dexter Guerrieri in 1995 with intentions of selling. This 15-foot wide bow-front property near Lincoln Center was, at the time, worth about $800,000.

Our team’s innovative solution:

Dexter recommended they NOT sell. Instead, he advised that they first create a deluxe garden duplex owner’s unit to maximize the value of the property and to achieve the price they sought. Post renovation, the owners liked the results so much that they decided to stay!
Six years later, in the spring of 2001, they hired Dexter as their exclusive agent. Even with three low-paying tenants, Dexter brought in $1.735 million – over twice the previous value, a rate of increase far in excess of the typical housing value increases during a slow economy.

This townhouse’s unique challenge:

This five-unit, free-market townhouse enjoyed an owner’s duplex, a spacious garden, and a prime location on a low-70s Central Park block. The out-of-state seller wanted a quick and easy sale, and appointed a personal representative to handle the transaction.

Our team’s innovative solution:

His representative hired Vandenberg because of our extensive database of direct buyers. His choice paid off when our Buyer Specialist brought the perfect buyer: an international investor taking advantage of the strength of the NYC townhouse market. Drawing on decades of experience in transatlantic transactions, Dexter deftly guided negotiations between the parties and their domestic and international representatives. Inside of three months, this 18’-wide, unfinished townhouse closed at the top price of $5,995,000.

This townhouse’s unique challenge:

This unusual 25-foot front townhouse, with a rear carriage house, was saddled with an abundance of rent-stabilized tenants. Its rear carriage house had been divided into several units, now vacant and in disrepair. To seasoned eyes, the carriage house could be transformed into a beautiful owner’s triplex and the courtyard into a prolific garden. Its owner had invested several months in an attempt to sell the property himself, but potential buyers had trouble seeing this property as it truly was – a rare diamond in the rough.

Our team’s innovative solution:

When the frustrated owner came to Dexter, Dexter convinced him to do something he had sworn he would never do: hire an exclusive listing agent. Dexter suggested partial demolition of the vacant units in the carriage home, so that potential buyers could more easily visualize what this triplex could offer. Recommended repairs and updates were made in short order. The result? Dexter brought in a buyer $300,000 over and above the highest offers the owner had received.

This townhouse’s unique story:

This handsome West 82nd townhouse off Central Park West came to Dexter from a seller who had long enjoyed income from ten rental units, six of which were decontrolled. While the seller had no idea what kind of buyer Dexter would bring to the table, he did know that Dexter could get the job done, having sold another townhouse through him previously.

Dexter Guerrieri’s innovative solution:

The owner hired Dexter who began searching for that special buyer who had the vision and experience to create an owner’s unit from the deregulated units. Dexter didn’t have to look far –he knew which of his past buyers would be looking for this ideal opportunity. By focusing on selling to well-versed, past clients, Dexter sold the property for more than any investor had offered, and the repeat buyer was delighted at the upside the property offered.

This townhouse’s unique story:

The owner of this 20-foot wide townhouse off the Park on West 87th Street knew Dexter through Austin K. Haldenstein*, who served as Senior Vice President at Vandenberg. She first met with Dexter to seek advice in preparation for the sale of her building.

Dexter Guerrieri’s innovative solution:

Dexter explained that a buyer would want a large owner’s unit with the garden. On his advice, the owner relocated a tenant. Then, with help from Dexter’s professional resources, she negotiated an exit agreement for another tenant, paying for moving and rental-broker fees to relocate. This created the space Dexter had recommended for an owner’s garden triplex. With these changes, Dexter was able to bring in a price several hundred thousand dollars above what she would otherwise have earned.

*Austin Haldenstein was founder of Austin K. Haldenstein Real Estate, the largest West Side real estate company, later purchased by Douglas Elliman.