In the West Village, where apartments trade for well over $3,000 a square foot, this one couldn't trade at all. It spent 367 days on the market before we were brought in to help. Staged properly, it went from 367 days unsold to a signed contract in 88.

The apartment had great features: a west-facing great room with Hudson River views and a Juliet balcony, chevron oak floors, eleven-foot ceilings, a chef's kitchen, and a primary suite most buyers would design from scratch. And yet it sat for over a year, carrying ~$10,000/month in costs the entire way.

The problem was never the apartment. Buyers today expect to walk in and see a finished home, and the space wasn't being shown that way. We staged it so the light, the river, and the scale did the talking, leaving nothing to guesswork.

Sometimes the apartment is right, the presentation just has to catch up.