Selling a property
Condo, co-op, one-to-four family, larger multi-family and mixed-use, commercial and industrial, and businesses — with or without the real estate. New York City, Long Island and Westchester.
You’re hiring one person with more than twenty years of transactions behind me to price the property correctly, present it properly, expose it strategically, negotiate effectively, and get it to a closing table.
I handle everything, and certainly every matter that decides the outcome. When I bring in other people — a photographer on a day I can’t be two places, a stager, a colleague covering a showing — they support what I’m doing. They don’t replace me. You are not going to meet me once and then spend four months dealing with whoever happened to be free.
I shoot my own photography — professionally, with HDR blending, on high-end equipment — produce measured floor plans, and build a marketing package that shows a property at its best.
I hold more than one New York broker’s license. One is my own company, NYREFCO; the other is with a firm affiliated with the national REALTOR® association, which is what makes me a REALTOR® and gives me access to that association’s listing service. REALTOR® is a membership mark, not a license — but holding both means the way your property goes to market is an actual decision rather than a default. Full syndication to the consumer portals is available either way, and where privacy, timing or an unusual buyer pool are strong considerations, other routes are genuinely open to me. How each one works, and when it makes sense.
I charge a full commission. It is higher than the number you may hear from an agent trying to win the listing on price, and it is stated plainly in the listing agreement. Commissions are not set by law and are fully negotiable — mine included.
Here is the argument, and you should hold me to it. A discounted fee buys a discounted effort, and the difference between a well-marketed property and an adequately-marketed one in this market is routinely larger than the entire fee difference. A one-percent saving on the commission is worthless if the property sells for three percent less, or sits an extra two months while you carry it.
What the fee buys: professional photography and floor plans, full syndication, real pricing analysis rather than a number designed to flatter you, negotiation by someone who has done this several hundred times, and a broker who is personally accountable because I own the firm.
Since the industry’s rules changed, your eventual buyer is far more likely than in the past to be under a written contractual obligation to their own agent. That is not a detail. It creates real strategic choices in how cooperation with the agents who have buyers is handled — choices that can be used to promote your interests and protect your proceeds, or fumbled into costing you money.
Most sellers are never told this exists as a decision at all. I’ll walk you through the options and what each one does to your net, and we will make that call deliberately rather than by default.
Our competition is playing checkers. We’re going to play chess.
I say our and we deliberately. Once you hire me we are on the same side of the table, playing against the same field, and my job is to see two and three moves further down the board than the people across from us — and then to walk you through what I’m seeing so the decisions are genuinely yours. That is what I do for every client I take.
If you want the cheapest broker, I’m not him and I’ll tell you that in the first ten minutes. If what you want is the highest net proceeds with the fewest hassles and the least risk — the best actual value for what you’re paying for — I want the job.
New York City and the Greater NYC metro area.
A lot of sellers now arrive having asked an assistant what the property is worth and what a broker should charge. Good — bring it with you. I’d rather work through what you were told than have it sitting unexamined while we go to market. What those tools get right, where they go wrong, and how I use them myself.
Full service is what I do and what I recommend, and it is where I earn my fee. But some sellers — usually experienced investors, or someone who already has a buyer — want listing exposure and nothing else. I can do that: MLS entry and syndication on a limited-service basis, at a low flat fee, with no negotiation, no coordination and no representation through the transaction.
I’ll be straight about the trade. You are giving up the parts of this that make the difference between an adequate result and a good one, and I won’t be there when the deal wobbles. If that is genuinely what you want, ask and I’ll quote it.
Written analysis, comparable evidence, and my honest read — including when I think you should ask less than you want to. Sellers who are told the truth early make more money.
I’ll tell you what to fix and what to leave. Most sellers over-invest in the wrong things. The test is whether a dollar spent returns more than a dollar.
Photography, floor plans, a walkthrough piece, and copy that describes the property honestly and well. Typically shot by me on high-end equipment, with exceptions where the property or the schedule calls for a specialist — not routinely handed to whichever vendor the brokerage has a deal with and then batch-processed, in bulk, by someone who has never stood in the room.
MLS syndication, direct outreach to buyers and brokers I know are looking, and showing feedback — when it is actually given — reported back to you in context and weighed for how relevant and how reliable it really is. Feedback is frequently absent, and when it arrives it is frequently worth very little. You should hear it either way, and you should hear my read on it.
Every offer presented with the context you need to make the best choice for yourself and to see where the risk sits — not just the number. Plenty of agents pass messages between the parties. That is not what this is. My job is not to bring you offers; it is to bring you the best one this market contains, on terms that actually close.
Where deals actually die — inspection, valuation, board approval, title, financing. I stay on it through all of it. On a co-op, I know what a given board weighs and what gets applications sent back, and I’ll make sure that knowledge is in the room while the package is being put together.
My house was originally listed by another broker. It didn’t sell, and I was very disappointed. So I decided to try to sell it myself. That turned out to be much harder than I expected. It was like a roller-coaster ride — I had a lot of inquiries, even some offers, and met with countless Realtors who wanted to list my property. Nothing panned out, but when my fiancée and I met with Diallo, we knew he was the one. He focused on our needs, communicated effectively, and made a lot of sense. We knew we could trust him. He found a buyer and negotiated an offer immediately — above full price.
I strongly recommend the real estate services of Diallo J. Stevens. He sold my house quickly, efficiently, and for $5,000 above asking price. He found my buyer within two or three weeks. He also sold my neighbor’s house just as quickly — and also for more than they were asking.
We just wanted to thank you for all your hard work and effort selling our various homes. As real estate speculators and mortgage professionals we have quite a bit of knowledge in regards to the real estate market.
I’ll come look at it, tell you what I think it’s worth and what I’d do with it, and you can decide. I want the listing, and I’ll earn it in the conversation.
