By Dan Orlando
Navigating Manhattan’s upper-tier residential marketplace can be an overwhelming task without the right team.
Naturally, savvy buyers seek out the best professionals to help them find their next home.
“The one point that we sell to people, as opposed other brokers, and even teams, is that you’re really getting two for the price of one,” Corcoran’s Mark Landisman told Real Estate Weekly. Landisman and his new wife, Julie Newdow, are one of the brokerage’s Top 25 teams.
“We live and breathe this, and we’re together 24/7. What better attention can you get from a broker or a team that would be competing with us?”
Landisman makes a strong case, which is underscored by the contrasting backgrounds that both he and his wife bring to the partnership.
Newdow graduated from Columbia University with a bachelors in music and a masters in marketing. She used the former to ignite a successful career on stage and screen.
A member of the Screen Actors Guild, she has appeared in multiple television shows such as NBC’s Open House New York.
She has also performed at several major venues, including signing the National Anthem at Madison Square Garden.
Landisman is a former CPA and served as the CFO of SterlingRisk Insurance.
He recently brought his seasoned skills of packaging and negotiating deals to a table that was already set by Newdow’s decades of real estate experience and joined her as a member of the Corcoran team.
“What’s so great is that we get to bounce ideas off of each other. You hear what a client says and you think you’ve really got it, but a second set of eyes, a second set of ears, really lets you focus like a laser on what people need,” said Landisman.
“Once we get in the door to pitch, we pretty much get them,” Newdow added, mentioning a recent weekend night out where the two couldn’t help but discuss potential landing spots for their stable of clients.
“We’ll be out on a Saturday night having dinner after seeing a show, and we’ll be talking about our clients and real estate and what we can be doing to help them,” Newdow said.
The couple said that finding the right home may be more complicated than simply finding a quality space in the client’s price range. Often, they need to put their heads together in order to find the perfect fit.
“We’re both on our iPhones talking in this gorgeous setting, having amazing food and looking at properties and clients,” Newdow said.
“For me its fun, because I had the experience for so many years of constantly looking for the next job, looking for the next job (again),” said Newdow. “I got used to going up for a million auditions. So now we sort of audition with owners.
“This is something I’m very used to. It is kind of nothing. It’s just such a fun business because you can quickly move on to the next one.”
The couple gave a recent example of how their unique pairing created an advantage for clients who faced a nearly insurmountable obstacle.
Buyers who had found themselves turned away from four separate co-op boards approached Mark and Julie. While the clients did have a respectable amount of liquidity, the husband found himself in-between jobs, and thus, despite his financial standing, was having a hard time passing the often rigorous co-op screenings.
While Julie coached the couple for their interview, Mark prepared their financial documents in a way that highlighted the clients’ strengths.
Ultimately, with Julie’s knowledge of how to prepare for auditions, and Mark’s experience in closing deals, the clients found themselves not striking out the fifth time.
Mark and Julie focus on Manhattan’s luxury residential market, but keep their fingers on the pulse of the surrounding boroughs and New Jersey.
Their interest is piqued in part because of the rapid development of several areas around Manhattan, but also because of the borough’s own modest inventory.
“If we had buildings full of a-million-and-a-half-dollar junior four apartments to sell, we couldn’t sell enough of them,” Landisman said.
While their wedding was the couple’s highlight of 2014, Newdow and Landisman have their sights set on further building up their deal book in 2015.
Mark said that he enjoys the autonomy and unique challenge of his relatively new-found career, while Julie candidly admitted that her theatrical background makes real estate exponentially more fun.
“Real estate is a lot easier. Theater, you’re always ready for being in a room full of 50 other people who are doing the same thing, in real estate it’s maybe 49, so it’s a lot easier,” she joked.
“In our off time we’re also talking about real estate,” said Newdow. “Because we love it.”
