I've closed over $500 million in real estate across New York City and South Florida. And after all of it — every listing, every negotiation, every sold sign — here's the truth that most people in this industry won't tell you:
Getting the listing is not the hard part. Getting it sold is.
Anyone can put a property on StreetEasy, take some photos, and call themselves a luxury broker. What they can't do — what separates the agents who sell from the agents who sit — is what happens before the listing hits the market, and what happens while the market decides whether it cares.
That thing is market creation. And it is an art form.
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You cannot sell a listing if there is no market for it. The job isn't to wait for a buyer to show up. The job is to create the conditions under which the right buyer has no choice but to act. |
It Starts Before You List
The most common mistake I see sellers make is treating the listing launch as the beginning of the process. It's not. The launch is the culmination of the process. By the time your apartment hits the market, the story should already be in motion.
What does that mean in practice? It means that before the listing goes live, the broker who is selling it should already:
• Know the inventory — every comparable unit on the market, its price, its days on market, its weaknesses relative to yours
• Know what makes this property singular — the specific quality, view, floor, renovation, layout, or character that no other listing in the market can claim
• Have a position — a clear, single-sentence articulation of what this property is and who it is for
• Have a buyer avatar — a specific, imagined ideal buyer: their life stage, their income, their aesthetic, their reason for moving, and where they are right now
• Have a reverse-engineered distribution plan — based on that buyer avatar, where do we reach them, and how do we make them feel that this property was designed for their life?
Without this foundation, everything else is noise.
Know the Inventory. Then Find What Makes Yours Irreplaceable.
Before I price, before I market, before I do anything — I study the competition. Not to run comps like every other agent. To understand the landscape so thoroughly that I can position our listing as the obvious answer to whatever question the market is asking.
What's sitting? What sold fast and why? What has been reduced three times and still hasn't moved? What do the listings that closed in 30 days have in common that the ones sitting at 180 days don't?
The answer is almost always one thing: a clear reason to buy this one over everything else.
Great real estate marketing is not about features. It's about the feeling the buyer gets when they imagine living there. The terrace isn't a terrace — it's a private outdoor dining room in the middle of Manhattan. The ceiling height isn't 11 feet — it's the only apartment in the building where you can hang a gallery wall without it feeling cramped. The language creates the image. The image creates desire. Desire creates urgency.
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Scarcity is the most powerful force in luxury real estate. When a buyer believes that what they're looking at cannot be replicated — that this is the only one, that waiting means losing — that is when they move. Your job is to make that true. Not by fabricating it. By identifying the genuine uniqueness and making sure every person who walks through the door understands it. |
Social Media Is the Amplification, Not the Strategy
I'm known for crushing social media. My content reaches millions of people. SERHANT. Studios produces cinema-quality video that makes properties feel like experiences rather than listings. We have over 8 million followers across our platforms — more than any real estate brand in the world.
But here's what I always tell sellers: social media is the amplification layer. It is not the foundation. You can't throw a mediocre, poorly positioned listing at social media and expect it to sell. The algorithm will show it to people. People will see it. And then they'll scroll past it, because it didn't tell them why it mattered.
Social works when the positioning is right. The visual hook — the shot that stops the scroll — is chosen because we've already decided what story we're telling and who we're telling it to. The video is constructed around a thesis, not a tour. The caption is written to answer the question the buyer didn't know they were asking.
The marketing stack I use for every luxury listing:
• Cinematic video — a full narrative walk-through that sells the lifestyle, not the square footage
• Social rollout — phased content across Instagram, YouTube, and platform-specific formats
• Broker outreach — direct communication to the 50–100 brokers most likely to have a buyer for this specific property
• Private network activation — every relevant contact in my database who fits the buyer avatar gets a personal outreach before the property goes public
• Print and digital presence — strategic placement in the right publications and digital channels where the buyer avatar lives
• Experiential marketing — open houses, private showings, and building events that create the sensation of demand
Creating a Market: The Psychology of Scarcity and Momentum
Here is the most important thing I know about selling luxury real estate, and it took me years and hundreds of transactions to internalize it:
Buyers buy when other buyers are buying.
A property that has been sitting gets stigmatized. A property that generates three showings in the first week and two offers in the second creates a self-reinforcing dynamic of urgency. The market feels the momentum. Agents who've passed on the property the first week want to know what they missed.
The question is: how do you create that momentum artificially — or better yet, engineer it genuinely — from the very first day?
The Launch Strategy
We don't list when we're ready. We list when the market is primed. That means building anticipation — broker previews, teaser content, targeted outreach — before the listing is technically live. When the listing hits the market, it doesn't arrive cold. It arrives into a pre-warmed environment where a subset of relevant brokers and buyers already know it's coming and are waiting.
The Pricing Philosophy
Aspirational pricing does not create markets. It kills them. The listings that sit are almost always overpriced on day one. The sellers who overprice in hopes of "leaving room to negotiate" don't realize that they've already lost before they started — because the first 30 days are when the most qualified buyers are paying attention. After that, the market moves on.
I price to sell. That means on the market, not above it. Price it right, create real demand through superior marketing and positioning, and you'll get market-price offers — sometimes above market. Price it wrong, and you'll sit until you've burned the listing and have to reduce to where you should have started.
The Language Patterns
Every communication about a luxury property — the listing description, the broker pitch, the social caption, the email to clients — should answer one question: why does this property deserve to exist in your life?
Not: '3-bedroom, 2-bath with views.' That is a spec sheet.
Yes: 'The only full-floor residence below 96th Street where the bedroom faces the park and the living room faces the river — and where the morning light hits both simultaneously.' That is a reason.
Language is not a finishing touch. It is infrastructure. It sets the frame for everything the buyer experiences after they read it.
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My job isn't to find the buyer. My job is to build the world that makes the right buyer feel like they've already found home before they step through the door. When I do that job correctly, closing isn't the hard part. |
About Nile Lundgren
Nile Lundgren is the founder of The Lundgren Team at SERHANT. — the most followed real estate brand in the world — with over $500 million in career sales across New York City and South Florida. A cast member on Netflix's Owning Manhattan, Fox News contributor, adjunct professor at Baruch College, and nationally recognized speaker. He is one of SERHANT.'s earliest hires and a leading voice in luxury real estate, new development, and sales strategy.
Ready to list, buy, or invest? Connect with Nile and The Lundgren Team.
