New York Daily News interview
Corcoran talks about building her real estate practice, applying life lessons to business, and being called a winner:
If you get labeled a winner, people come along for the ride. Might as well enjoy it and they should too.
She owns 12 buildings in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx, a beach house on Fire Island, a schoolhouse in Duchess County, and a Manhattan co-op.
Times feature on $3.5m Manhattan home
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Corcoran gives the New York Times a tour of the three-bedroom apartment on 94th and Park, overlooking Central Park and the Manhattan treeline. Since buying it in 2001, she has redecorated in pale blue, cream, and yellow with white Swedish country furniture.
To me, it’s just my dream. All my life I’ve wanted a pretty house, and I never could afford one. Of course, the only thing my brokers could agree on when I bought it was that I had overpaid.
She paid $3.5 million for the 3,500 square foot apartment in July 2000.
Use What You Have
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Corcoran publishes the book, also titled If You Don’t Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons On Your Pigtails in hard and softcover editions. She wears a pink padded bra and pigtail wig to the softcover launch. The books contains 24 unconventional lessons she said she learned from her mother, and which helped her turn a $1,000 loan into a $4 billion business. One of the lessons:
Jumping out the window will make you either an ass or a hero
She talks about the difference between writing and entrepreneurship:
It’s lonely writing.
Sells Corcoran Group
0 CommentsCorcoran sells the firm, now Manhattan’s second-largest independent residential real estate company, for a price reported at close to $70 million.
Not being national was shortsighted. The local business has changed. And we couldn’t grow as aggressively as we wanted without help.
She plans to stay at the company and remain chairwoman:
I can’t imagine doing anything else
Second one-day sale
0 CommentsCorcoran Group sells another 13 apartments owned by the MacArthur Group in four buildings in a one-day, fixed-price sale. The units on the Upper East Side and in West End Ave. sell out in a little more than an hour, for a total of $1.1 million. Buyers pay an average of 50% below the asking price, and receive a cash payment equal to two years of maintenance. All apartments of the same size are listed for the same price regardless of location in the building. A buyer:
I am thrilled. I saw the apartment. I liked it right away, so I bought it. There was no haggling over the price or waiting for the seller to accept my bid. It was easy; like buying a pair of shoes.
First one-day sale
0 CommentsCorcoran Group sells 84 cooperative apartments, at prices ranging from $48,500 for a studio to $245,500 for a three-bedroom unit. Corcoran has been hired by MacArthur Associates, which sponsored the cooperative conversion for the buildings, to market the unsold units amid a real estate downturn. She says the ‘sweepstakes atmosphere’ of the one-day sale helps create interest in the properties. Corcoran:
The goal of the owners was to sell these apartments in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of money spent on marketing or improvements to the units. I estimated that the advertisement cost alone for an auction would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $600,000 or $700,000. So we decided to try the one-day sale. It has worked.
Second Manhattan office
0 CommentsThe group opens its second office in Manhattan, this time on the Upper West Side.
Higgins, Corcoran marry
Higgins and Corcoran marry. Higgins:
I’m proud of my wife: And I’m proud to call myself her spouse.
First Manhattan office
0 CommentsCorcoran Group opens its first office in downtown Manhattan.
Founds Corcoran Group
0 CommentsCorcoran starts the brokerage after working as a waitress and receptionist. She gets a $1,000 loan from a friend and gets her brokers license.
I started my brokerage firm in New Jersey immediately because my boyfriend had a friend who was an attorney, and as an attorney he was able to license me. So I just went and took the test. In those days, you have to appreciate 35 years ago, there were no barrier entries at all. If you could walk and talk you could pass the test. And I could do both, so I sailed through it.
