By Al Barbarino
Corlie Ohl doesn’t just sell apartments; she helps turn them into homes.
Ohl, a 2006 graduate of the Parsons School of Design, worked for many years as an interior designer before joining Citi Habitats in 2010.
The relative newcomer to the brokerage industry earned the distinction “Rookie of the Year” during her first year at the firm for her sales and rental prowess.
“You work seven days a week in this job and your first year is the hardest thing you’ll ever do in your whole life,” Ohl told Brokers Weekly.
“Your feet want to fall off by the end of the day, but if your clients want to see an apartment, you better show them to it or you’re going to lose the opportunity.”
But Ohl goes beyond simply showing. Much of the value she adds — and a big reason why she has started off her career in brokerage with a bang — comes from her expertise in design and architecture, having analyzed countless floor plans and worked on acclaimed restaurants and hotels throughout the country. As an interior designer she worked for industry giant Jeffrey Beers International and boutique architectural firm Bogdanow Partners Architects, a firm once well-known as SoHo’s premier restaurant designer, Ohl said.
The Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami, Truman’s Gentlemen’s Groomers on East 56th Street, the Telepan Restaurant on the Upper West Side, the Edison Ballroom near Times Square, and Brother Jimmy’s restaurant near Penn Station are among the projects she helped design.
As a broker, she is more than willing to use the skills gleaned in the past to help her succeed in the future, guiding home-seekers every step of the way in imagining their new homes, from suggesting furniture arrangements to sketching floor plans to making sure the potential home is the right fit, she said.
“I can help them out in providing that vision, because a lot of people don’t always think about things that way when they look at a space,” she said.
“A lot of times, there’s no floor plan available and I have no problem sketching those for people. Based on my experiences and having worked on all of those buildings in the past (as an interior designer), I’m able to listen to what somebody needs to determine the right space for them.”
The process doesn’t end there. Just a few days before her interview with Brokers Weekly, Ohl received a number of photographs from a gentleman she had moved into an apartment, just one recipient of a complementary floor plan. The photos showed how her advice had come to fruition.
“I’m very much in their lives and I almost feel like they are my children,” Ohl said of her clients. “It’s very satisfying for me to see where they have put things and how the place looks after they’ve moved in.”
Ohl also brings a strong knowledge of the Manhattan market to deliver the right home and best deals for her clients, with a particular affinity for the Gramercy, Flatiron, West and East Village (where she lives) neighborhoods, but an understanding that “it’s very important to be flexible,” she said.
The latest data from Citi Habitats showed that average Manhattan rents reached $3,459 in June, the highest since the firm began tracking the statistic in 2002. Despite rising rents, Ohl believes there are still great rental deals out there for those who are not ready to purchase a new home.
“In order to find those opportunities, you need an agent who understands where the steals are,” she said, pointing to some of her Midtown East rentals that come in under market rate.
Corlie grew up in Iowa and earned a bachelor’s degree from Montana State University, with a triple major in Criminal Justice, Sociology and Psychology. She next spent nearly a decade in New Orleans where she ran a fine dining restaurant then climbed the ranks at a well-known architectural firm prior to moving to New York City about eight years ago.
