Transcript
Dean Wehrli:
Welcome to the New Home Insights podcast. I’m your host Dean Wehrli. Our guest today is Kirsten Jordan. Kirsten is something of a ground breaker. She is the first female star of the Bravo TV show Million Dollar Listing in New York. She’s one of the top real estate agents in Manhattan, so that makes her a very big fish in, I think, the biggest of ponds. And she does this while being the mom of three kids. Kirsten, first, thanks for coming on.
Kirsten Jordan:
Well, thank you so much for having me. I feel like I don’t have anything else to add to that. I’ve been in the business for 13 years. I love what I do. And I’m really excited about this next season of Million Dollar Listing New York. It was my first season and it took us… It took me a year and a half to shoot it. So everybody else has been doing it for almost two years. It took them almost two years to film the entire thing. So it has been epic, and we are making history.
Dean Wehrli:
And it starts on May 6th, so it’s in the can. It’s ready to go. You can’t tell us obviously any spoilers. Obviously, but it’s in there. It’s ready.
Kirsten Jordan:
Yeah. It’s ready though. And I think the world’s ready for it.
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah, I hope so. So, let’s touch on that a little, let’s start with that. You’re the first woman to lead that show in, I think this is the ninth season. How is that possible? I’m not asking that… I mean, that seems crazy in a place like New York, there are tons of incredibly good brokers that are female in New York City. How did that happen?
Kirsten Jordan:
Well, it must be the million dollar question because I know that women have tried out over the years, because I know some of them, and I don’t know why I was picked and why this timing happened this way. I do know, though, that I bring a lot to the table. I have a lot of broker relationships. I’ve been doing this for a long time. You have the intrigue of watching a working mom balance it all. And then there’s also this aspect of, I would say an approachability aspect, which I think is going to be fun for everybody, because what you see is what you get. I don’t have a lot of boundaries in general, which is very expensive for therapy, but very good for reality TV.
Dean Wehrli:
That does save you some cash, doesn’t it?
The way home prices are going though, what is this measly Million Dollar Listing? Shouldn’t it be $10 million Listing New York, maybe pretty soon?
Kirsten Jordan:
I know it should be. It should be much more. I think when it started though, Million Dollar Listing, I think for the rest of the country was still kind of a fun kind of idea and that’s in… You know, it did start in LA. That was the first franchise.
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. So, but still 10 years on, let’s say it might need some updates.
Kirsten Jordan:
True, true. It might need to be Multimillion Dollar Listing.
Dean Wehrli:
Multimillion Dollar Listing at least. So I’m doing some fan boy questions real quick here, kind of like. Who’s your most famous client? You don’t have to name that person, but you have to describe them in such a way that will be obvious to everyone who it is.
Kirsten Jordan:
My most famous client that I’ve ever worked with. Let’s see. Well, it depends. I worked with somebody who is a major actor.
Dean Wehrli:
Oh come on. Okay. DeNiro. DeNiro.
Kirsten Jordan:
Okay. Red-headed DeNiro-
Dean Wehrli:
Oh, sorry.
Kirsten Jordan:
And big in the world of like the Oscars and all of that. I’ll leave it at that. And that was, that was really in a very, very great learning experience for me, I would say. That was probably my first time delving into what it’s like dealing with the media, which is something I’m learning a lot about now and something I didn’t know anything about. I think it was six years ago when I did that sale.
Dean Wehrli:
I’m going to say Nicole Kidman. Because it’s not that guy from CSI, because he’s not big in the Oscar world. I can’t think of his name… David Caruso. It’s not Caruso who, by the way, I believe is like 5’2″. Am I wrong?
Kirsten Jordan:
Probably, probably. What I’ve realized is that some of the only tall actors seem to be the stars on the Million Dollar Listing show, because I feel like, not the ones in LA, but the ones in New York, the guys are just tall, like Frederick and Ryan are big. They are tall guys.
Dean Wehrli:
Have you had an infamous client? And you can start with Scott Rudin.
Kirsten Jordan:
I would say that the most infamous clients… We did some of these U.S. Marshal repossessions at the beginning of my career and those people were all infamous. I at the time didn’t really know who they were, but it was always really fascinating because you’d go inside of these homes, and it was like they had left by night and sometimes all the clothing would be there, photos. And that, I would say, that’s what infamous feels like, I guess is when you walk in someplace and it’s a whole time capsule. And usually those places take months to hit the U.S. Marshals, so they’d been sitting for a long time too.
Dean Wehrli:
Wow. So their musty shoulder pad suits are just hanging in the closet.
Kirsten Jordan:
Yeah. And photos of them with ex-presidents everywhere.
Dean Wehrli:
That is pretty infamous. I was thinking more like cancel culture kind of thing, but that’s serious prison infamous. I like that.
Kirsten Jordan:
Yeah. White collar.
Dean Wehrli:
Let’s talk about how you do business. How analytical do you get? Are you a data person? Do you keep up with pricing trends and things like that really minutely? And do you use that when you kind of arrive at the logic of what a listing should be for?
Kirsten Jordan:
Well, there is a lot of analysis that needs to go into pricing property in Manhattan, period. And a lot of that analysis doesn’t just necessarily come from closed data. It does also come from contract data and that comes from broker relationships. So I would say that’s where I think I have a strength. It’s that calling other agents, getting the data of what something’s gone to contract for, or at least around that number, because that’s how you get to real-time data. That’s why the Olshan Report, which is the luxury report that comes out weekly, is just something that’s so widely watched by brokers because it shows real time velocity and real-time activity. So I would say from an analytical perspective, we have to be analytical. Am I a super granular person? No, I am very big picture and everything I do, I look at from a very big picture perspective, but apartment by apartment, there’s no way of getting away from analysis.
Dean Wehrli:
Do you even dig into weeds like, I don’t know, like demographics or something where you look at those to try and get a feel for a neighborhood or how a neighborhood is transitioning? Anything like that?
Kirsten Jordan:
I would say most of the time with apartments that we are pricing… The neighborhoods that I work in, there’re direct comps that are usually nearby, and so it really is based on most recent sales. We usually don’t spend a lot of time on macro unless we’re underwriting something that we’ll be selling in the future and for the developers that are listening, they know what that feels like. You know, you’re trying to understand what the future is going to be. That’s the crystal ball numbers. Like what are we going to sell these apartments for in three to five years?
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah. You hear interior designers talk a lot about when they look at pieces, they have the story of that piece, the history of that piece. Do you ever think about that in terms of that apartment you’re trying to sell?
Kirsten Jordan:
Well, I recently sold Nelson Rockefeller’s apartment. And I would say that that was a very unique sale because of the fact that the apartment was historical, because he actually bought the apartment because he owned more than one floor in the building next door. And so as that building was going up on Fifth Avenue he decided to buy that floor so it could basically match the lowest floor of the apartment that he had in the other building, which by the way, you could never do now. And he broke through and had like a couple of steps to come down to this particular apartment. So when we sold that last year, it was the kind of sale that the history was a huge part of everything, because the person who is the architect who did all the design on the interior as a lot of those details were still there and were very art deco, and I think the owner now probably will rip all of it out. But there were people who actually were interested in the details and the history, and understanding why they had done those details in the apartment.
Dean Wehrli:
That is interesting. I guess you can turn that lemon into lemonade, right? I’ve seen the show. I saw one of them. I did my research, and it was something I think from just last season, and they turned this Miami Vice eighties unit with the decor thoroughly, just attuned to that somewhat older lawyer gentlemen. And they… He threw a big Miami vice kind of a party and try to find that person who loves the eighties kind of a thing that was smart, I thought. You would do that?
Kirsten Jordan:
Yeah. We didn’t have the chance for that one property that I… Because of the fact that it sold really quickly, and I think it was well-priced and, and it had a tremendous amount of activity on it. It was also the right price for that particular apartment at the time, very unique terraced views, a relatively, I would say middle of the road, co-op for Park Ave… For Fifth Avenue standards. So from the perspective that it was something that was a building that you didn’t necessarily need to be a Rockefeller to buy there.
Dean Wehrli:
So if you get a really old unit, you’ll have to get one of those big front wheel bicycles and just turn into like a turn of the century, kind of a vibe and find that person.
Kirsten Jordan:
There’s a lot of opportunity I would say to do that. The only problem is a lot of these really historical apartments are in these Park Avenue, co-op buildings, and they are not as excited about you doing creative, silly things on TV with the apartment.
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah. Okay. Is money… I mean, again, prices have gone kind of nuts lately. Do you deal with a sector of your clientele where it’s not a money thing at all? Money is not really, the price is not really the consideration.
Kirsten Jordan:
Yeah. I would say that in the world of Man… Well, specifically the world of Hampton’s rentals, I would say that area seems to have right now, no real price limit. What I mean, I think there is something that just rented for like $2 million for the summer or something like that or something crazy out in the Hamptons. And we have a particular buyer right now like that who is interested in Hamptons rentals, and we’re talking about a hundred to $200,000 a month for the month of August for something quality in Southampton, which by the way, isn’t that easy to find. So that’s where we’re seeing, I would say that’s where we’re seeing like, give… Tell me what it costs and I’ll do it because it’s really quite the luxury experiential asset instead of just the purchase.
Dean Wehrli:
In that luxury sector, then, when sometimes when it’s not cost or even when, when it is cost is a consideration, but at the consideration, what are those key considerations, then those key things that allow you to find that right house for that right client?
Kirsten Jordan:
Well, New Yorkers care a lot about their job. They care a lot about who they know and where they’re seen and all of that. And then there’re the schools clearly for a lot of the people who live in New York. So I’m a big fan of convenience. I live on the Upper West Side. For me, that location works very well because of convenience, because of schools, because of what I need for myself. So I think that thinking about convenience is super important, your cost of taxis and Ubers and getting around is a big piece of things, and I think that’s important to think about.
The other thing that’s important to think about is your relative carry, what it really costs to carry these assets, because the truth is the costs usually don’t go down, and that is a really important thing to think about because a lot of these carrying costs can already start out high and then they get higher. So that’s another thing that I think is really important to think about. And then the other part of it is really the ability of resale and what the asset looks like to a buyer for the future. So if you think it’s something you’re easily going to be able to get out of for various reasons and some of these buildings that are the most difficult buildings still seem to be pretty liquid in general, just be as of recent, they do very well as long as the assets been kept up very, very well. So it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be in a building where it’s a super flexible building from a resale perspective, but for whatever reason you feel confident about the resell potential of the asset.
Dean Wehrli:
Are you getting more of that investor who are thinking almost more that resell potential in three years than they are about living there in these ensuing three years?
Kirsten Jordan:
There’s a lot of investors out there that are coming in to try to get deals. There’s not a ton of deals left. A lot of developers have deep pockets and are holding firm on some of these assets. And then the stuff that’s turnkey, that’s easy to buy, that’s resale really has absorbed very, very quickly. So it’s not so easy right now to get such a deal, but in some pockets, if you’re willing to be a little more flexible about neighborhood, there’s still opportunity.
Dean Wehrli:
Are there those little tiny things that… Idiosyncratic things that we don’t think about? Like this is near my important… A subway stop, or this is really walkable to my favorite restaurant. Do you have those things that’ll enter into the discussion?
Kirsten Jordan:
I think for the luxury buyer, there has to be something that feels like you arrived. For me, it was having river views and having really high ceilings and architectural details. To me, that’s arriving. Having the doorman, having those details, feeling like it’s a big spacious space that we have that has light and air. Super important for me. Whereas I have other buyers that specifically want to be in a few block radius either in the West Village or they want to be in that couple block radius on the Upper East Side on Park, all of that, which, which does make sense because you know what, you’re spending a certain amount of money. It is nice to be able to walk to Bilboquet if that’s what you want or further uptown, some of those other really hotspots in the Eighties.
Dean Wehrli:
So not to stereotype New Yorkers, but perception is big. I mean that you’ve arrived. Is it very frequent that your clients are making a statement and want to consciously make a statement with their purchase?
Kirsten Jordan:
Definitely. What’s been really interesting recently is with the rise of Brooklyn as being a place that’s now really on the map for a larger pool of buyers, I would say that’s made people even be able to say, Hey, if I can’t buy the townhouse of my dreams for $7 million in Manhattan, I’ll take a look in Brooklyn because I’ll get something really special for 7 million in Brooklyn. So yes, I think that people are thinking about how to feel like I’ve arrived and they’re getting more geographically agnostic, not completely, but they are somewhat. So there’s that as an idea. But the more luxury the larger, the purchase, the more the cache matters and New York still has a social caste system. You know, it is what it is and you just can’t ignore it when you’re dealing with these luxury buyers that want to feel like they bought into a club, a private club.
Dean Wehrli:
So Brooklyn’s popped, is Staten island next?
Kirsten Jordan:
Well I don’t know about Staten island. I would say maybe, but I think Queens is really doing really well as well. We’re seeing a ton of activity there, and that’s really easy from like a subway perspective. So I think that’s probably where we’re going to see the most, how do you say it… Probably the most transition in the short term.
Dean Wehrli:
That does make sense. I was kidding about Staten Island. Queens makes a lot of sense. Poor Staten Island. I’m sorry. Are your clients often driven by just pure emotion? They just, they have that connection that click, when they see the space and they have to happen. Does that happen?
Kirsten Jordan:
I would say that’s the most frequent with finance people, because they are so focused on their spreadsheets that then when they actually become emotionally attached to a property that they’ve seen, they know how to like adjust the numbers so that their spreadsheet works. Whereas they also know how to adjust the numbers when they don’t like something, which I find happens a lot with these, like with married couples where, when the husband’s not on board, he’s like, listen, I can’t make this spreadsheet work for that. And then when all of a sudden the husband finds the apartment that he loves, it’s like all of a sudden he makes those micros work and the spreadsheet works so now we can buy it. So I don’t believe in anybody that’s buying a residential property for their primary use that there’s no emotion in it. I just don’t believe that.
Dean Wehrli:
Okay. That makes sense. And you kind of anticipated my next question, which is, do you also have those just super anal, absolutely, they’ve studied the hell out of the market and they know what they want and how much you should cost? Do you get a lot of that?
Kirsten Jordan:
Well, yeah, it’s happening more and more. Everybody’s an expert. And they think that they’re an expert because they’ve spent so much time online looking at all of the comparables and all the things that have sold, and they’re quicker to the trigger than the brokers are sometimes, which is giving us all a run for our money. But it’s also great because it’s raising the bar for agents, and it’s making us more focused, and it’s making us have to adapt to what it’s going to take to get ahead of these buyers, because we still do provide value to them because they aren’t brokers and they don’t have the experience we have. It’s just sometimes, yeah, I have brokers who I’m just like, could you, I mean, sorry, I have, I have buyers who I think to myself, why don’t you just become a real estate agent. Who are we kidding? You love this more than I do.
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah. I can see that. We have that… I’m based in Northern California, and we hear a lot from sales agents at just normal price points that their buyers are… They all think they know exactly how much that home should cost. They’ve studied the hell out of it. They’ve run the numbers, they’ve done regressions on it, and that’s become very common.
Let’s talk about the future of the luxury market and your market. I mean, I often have my guests look into their crystal ball. You’re no exception. What do you think, where do you see the luxury sector in New York going over this next year or two?
Kirsten Jordan:
Well, I think we have to start with the fact that there is a lot of liquidity in the market and, on some level, people at the very luxury level do view these trophy kind of pied-a-terre apartments as kind of like a baseball card trading kind of idea. You know, it’s like, what’s the most exclusive apartment in a specific building, and it kind of trades, especially these condominiums, it does kind of trade between these billionaires. And so I view the luxury market as having a large rebound.
I think that there are some buildings that are really, really strong that are going to capture those buyers. If you just saw the other day, there was a… I think it was a duplex that traded at 220 Central Park South for 33 million, which is over $10,000 a square foot, if I’m not mistaken. And that wasn’t even on the market for very long. It was like, and it’s because it’s a unique asset. There’s nothing else in the building. And it was, that’s a big trade to have happened very, very quickly. And that just shows you the resilience for these trophy unique assets that don’t trade frequently in the top buildings.
Dean Wehrli:
Will sometimes, or even frequently, will those be like this isn’t just their primary residence or even their secondary, this is their place for when they’re in the city twice a year, kind of a you know…
Kirsten Jordan:
Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, that’s where there’s a lot of Texans that I’ve spoken to that have gotten places in or had gotten places in Manhattan before the pandemic. I feel like we’re seeing a little bit less of them right now because they’ve also detoured to Florida a little bit. A lot of them are doing the whole, what is it, Park City kind of thing, or one of these islands, like Anguilla things, those kinds of… But listen, they’ve done very, very well in Texas and what’s more exciting than having some really nice places to go with your many children to enjoy real estate. And then the weather.
Dean Wehrli:
With a cowboy hat and spurs, I’m assuming.
Kirsten Jordan:
Right. Totally.
Dean Wehrli:
Per the stereotype. I’m sorry, Texas. So let’s just pretend though that the market does… Let’s say it’s three years from now, four years from now and things are slowing down. Does the luxury sector get hit first? Get hit last? Is there typically a trend specific to your niche?
Kirsten Jordan:
I would say that the luxury sector definitely gets hit first as things correct. I think we saw that between the 2017 to 2020. There was a lot of overbuilding for these really big, beautiful, ultra luxury homes with the hundredth floor ballroom, like with Central Park Tower, and in the end 220 Central Park South, I believe, sold out before things had, well, no, they actually sold that while things were in mid correction, I would say, so they still did well because it was just so special, which is the same way that we’re seeing with… There’s another project, that’s a Naftali project that’s on between 79th and 80th on Madison Avenue. Same thing. Sold out, nobody even blinked at pricing for $10 million plus units because of the fact that the developer is very, very well known and stands behind the product.
So I would say that the luxury sector, when there’s a lot of froth, that’s the stuff that gets hit first, but the product where the developer’s really well known, it’s boutique and it’s small, and there’s a unique aspect to it that you can’t replicate, those are the buildings that I do think just perform regardless of the market.
Dean Wehrli:
Unique’s a grossly overused word, but those uncommon, those infrequent kind of opportunities should hold.
Kirsten Jordan:
Then they lean into that private club feeling of saying, you know, there’s a select number of people that can afford this and we’re going to make it so nice that it really is a private buyer’s club.
Dean Wehrli:
Historically that high end market has a much higher days on market. It could be hundreds of days for some of these million dollar apartments to turn. Has the market gotten hot enough where that’s no longer true, you’re getting these really short days on markets and things are getting snapped up very quickly?
Kirsten Jordan:
Well, there are some new units, like the one I said at 220 Central Park South that came on and absorbed quickly. It was at the right price, probably for where it needed to trade. Unique asset. Only one of its kind in the building that was available. Other kinds of buildings that now are competing against assets that didn’t exist before, that’s where the days on market are still going to be where they are right now. For example, the post-war buildings on Central Park South that are dated and need full renovations. Those are the situations where it’s a little bit more difficult to say, Hey, everything’s selling so this is just going to sell. And that is still going to probably have a little bit of time before the other inventory around it, that is new and has the same views and absorbs so that then theirs can absorb at a relative discount.
Dean Wehrli:
That makes sense. Let’s switch gears a little bit. Do you track design trends in the luxury market? You know, those must haves or I can’t even think, you know, a lamp designed by Yoko Ono. I made that up, but are those little funky design trends something you track and take advantage of or use when you’re selling a home?
Kirsten Jordan:
Well, I would say we take advantage of it from the perspective of knowing what’s in and what’s out and being able to advise our sellers on what we think they should keep in their home, what we think they should take out. But we also do outsource to the experts. I think we all work with stagers. We all work with designers, making sure that they can help with advising the client about what they need to do, because frankly, that’s something that I’m still not an expert in. I have an eye, I know what I like, but still it’s like knowing when bolognese sauce tastes good, I know when it tastes good, but not everybody can tell you why and what else you need to add to make it taste good. And that’s the same with design.
Dean Wehrli:
Or to keep up because they can literally turn in a few weeks. No no. That’s very passe now.
Kirsten Jordan:
True. And especially with new developments, the issue is you have to pick these finishes sometimes a couple of years before you’re actually selling. And that becomes difficult because the trends do move really quickly, which is where the expensive building and making sure that you don’t cut corners really is important because at least if it’s well done, then usually it’s timeless.
Dean Wehrli:
Yeah. Is that bamboo? That was Tuesday. I’m sorry. Tear that out.
Kirsten Jordan:
Yeah, exactly. Or the pummeled nickel or the, oh, there’s all kinds of stuff.
Dean Wehrli:
Pummeled nickel. I like that. Mike Tyson, I believe invented that. I think. I could be wrong.
Do any of your clients want what they absolutely can’t have? Like they just watched Blade Runner 2049 on Netflix. So they insist on having one of those moving holographic significant others around the house, or do they really just get me X and you have to tell them X doesn’t exist.
Kirsten Jordan:
Well, if you think about it, every New Yorker has an aspirational list of stuff that they want, that they can’t have. And most people right now are like, yeah and it’d be a really big bonus if I could have outdoor space. And you’re like, well, with your current, what you’re planning on spending and how many bedrooms you want, if you don’t want to sleep outside on the terrace, you’re probably not going to have outdoor space, because that’s the thing that everybody’s looking for right now is maybe having this outdoor space bonus. So I would say that’s probably more, as far as like other weird asks, I have a client that wants to have an arc trainer in the gym in the building and a specific brand of arc trainer. I think that’s the only one that there is as the arc trainer or whatever it is, but he wants that one. Yeah. And so he has to figure out a way that they could also have that trainer in the gym.
Dean Wehrli:
You’re going to have to hire your own, it sounds like.
Kirsten Jordan:
Yep.
Dean Wehrli:
So I’m going to pitch my show to you for Bravo. Are you ready? It’s called Straight Eye For The Queer Guys. Hear me out. Hear me out. I teach them to lose their fashion sense and to be intolerant of cultural change, and every episode ends with me having them like wearing cargo pants in a brew pub and spilling dark beer on their really scraggly unkempt beards. Yes or no? Go.
Kirsten Jordan:
I feel like it’s going to be hilarious. I love it. I love it. Yeah. But I feel like it also has to go with the location change. Like you’ve got to bring them to a place where this is like the norm in this.
Dean Wehrli:
Oh yeah. Yeah. I like that. Minot, North Dakota. We’ll do that. Or someplace in Minnesota. I don’t know something like that. Kirsten, thank you. You gave us a lesson in the luxury market, especially in New York, but I think a lot of those things can translate to any luxury market in the country. So we appreciate you coming on.
Kirsten Jordan:
Thank you for having me. And I hope that you all tune in on Thursday night at 9:00 PM Eastern on May 6th for my debut. And if you’re listening to this after that keep tuning in for the next 16 weeks, because that’s how many episodes we have.
Dean Wehrli:
On Bravo. And you can even do the on demand because that’s how I watched some old episodes. So do that again.
Kirsten Jordan:
It’s on Apple TV. It’s on Peacock. It’s on, Hey You, which is out there and a bunch of other countries. It’s everywhere.
Dean Wehrli:
I appreciate it. Awesome. Thank you, Kirsten. This has been a pleasure.
Kirsten Jordan:
Thank you.
