779 days on the market, and this sprawling four-bedroom inside The Clebourne would not sell. With our help, it returned to the market and went under contract in just 36 days.

The building itself is grand, an Upper West Side co-op with a porte-cochere and a lobby that feels like a European hotel. The apartment, on the other hand, was estate condition; scuffed walls, stale air, the kind of place buyers walked right past.

What buyers were missing was the math. At the list price it worked out to $823/sqft in a neighborhood that averages well over $1,300/sqft. It was a rambling prewar home with room to renovate on the new owner's terms. The fixes were cosmetic and quick. The real work was reframing the value so it read as the opportunity it was, not a project to avoid.

Staged and reintroduced, it went to contract in 36 days.

The upside was there the whole time, it just needed to be pointed at.