Coldwell President Shares Career Experience in Real Estate

Coldwell Bankers president Stan Ponte, is sharing his real estate knowledge on television. (The Epoch Times)

NEW YORK—Stan Ponte, president of Coldwell Bankers Previews International, started his career at the bottom of the corporate ladder. He began his career as a television actor before entering real estate upon his parents’ insistence of a stable source of income. Having left acting and built up a reputation in the real estate world, he has now come full circle with current and upcoming television appearances.

Ponte appears on “Open House New York” and soon will be a star on the HGTV pilot program, “Selling in New York,” a 13-week series that follows him and his brokers in their day-to-day adventures.

Beginnings

When Ponte started his real estate career, he provided $1,500-a-month rentals to “NYU kids in the basement next to the heater,” Ponte said. Then came the dot-com boom, when he found himself selling big lofts in Tribeca. A typical deal in that era? “Eight guys at Gizmo.com for $20,000 a month” whose only requirements were that there is enough room for a “pool table and good Internet access.”

Within a year in real estate, he obtained a string of clients who were movie stars. Seeing that he was successful, luxury residential power woman Elizabeth Stribling called him for an interview with her firm. He got the job and worked at Stribling for 10 years. Ponte started out doing everything—open houses, showings, and paperwork.

“It’s what your grandfather tells you to do: do everything. Go sweep the floors, and learn how to do it,” he said.

Today, although he no longer sells apartments, he is still selling. “I’m selling a brand,” Ponte said.

Coldwell is unique in that it has 3,800 offices in 48 countries. Most of Coldwell’s deals are done in two parts. If a broker cannot find an exact apartment match for a client, he will keep the client’s needs in the back of his mind, and when the perfect property becomes available, the broker will contact the client even if it’s years since the client’s original request.

“That’s how most deals are really done. A good broker puts two and two together and creates a deal,” Ponte said. “We’re not going to wait for the people who are in New York City now to buy a townhouse. We’re going to tell all of our brokers all over the world and show them a video of the house. This is on the marker and let them think through all of their clients and see if anyone has said ‘I would like to buy a townhouse’ even if it was two years ago.”

Kudos to the New York Market

Working in New York real estate has major upsides. “We are multi-faceted in why people are living here—for education, for the arts, to have a home here,” Ponte said. “It creates more demand that is not tied to one industry or any one demographic.”

Business from Turkey, South Korea, and South America is strong and Coldwell’s residential market share is up nearly 750 percent in the last 18 months, according to Ponte.

Ponte sees the markets moving from luxury back to value and shelter—the basics of real estate.

“Builders desperately trying to find where shelter is in New York City. How many square feet does a studio have to be to meet a value requirement? Homes that meet the shelter quotient are selling much faster than the luxury or oversized properties,” Ponte said.

Ponte’s prediction is that redividing floorplans and downward pricing will become more common as developers try to tailor homes to buyers’ more conservative needs.