NEW LOOK Bill Tooker bought an apartment on West 15th Street for $685,000 in 2006 and gut-renovated the kitchen.

By KEITH MULVIHILL

EVERYONE knows that the word “recession” can strike fear in the hearts of anxious home sellers far and wide. But there is another dreaded, but less talked about, “R” word capable of setting a seller’s nerves on edge with a single utterance: renovation.

“A lot of sellers don’t want to deal with renovations,” said Thomas Coates, a broker for Halstead Property. “They are just scared of them. First there’s the expense, and then there’s the thought of putting up with no usable kitchen or bathroom for four to six weeks.”

Last summer, when Mr. Coates got a call from a previous client, Bill Tooker, about wanting to sell his 800-square-foot one-bedroom apartment on the 11th floor of 10 West 15th Street, he went over for a fresh look. Mr. Tooker bought the place in 2006 for $685,000.

“I remember when I helped Bill buy the apartment,” Mr. Coates said. “I thought the kitchen was dreary and dated.” The countertops were mauve; the kitchen cabinets had frosted plastic windows. “I told Bill that if he hoped to earn some money on the deal he should renovate it,” he recalled.

To his relief, Mr. Tooker agreed. Persuading prospective home sellers to go the extra mile (or two) is not easily accomplished. “People say to me, ‘This is the way it looks; I am not spending any money,’ ” Mr. Coates said. “And yet, they still want top dollar.”

Mr. Tooker, 44, a financial analyst for a Manhattan clothing manufacturer, began by researching the cost of a gut-renovated kitchen. “I started out by going to Home Depot and Ikea,” he said, and he found he could do the job for about $20,000. “But I thought: ‘This is a good property in a good building, I need to do this right.’ ” He settled on Elyotto Kitchen & Bath on 10th Avenue in Midtown.

In the end, he paid $37,000 for his new galley kitchen. This included everything: pipe reconfiguration, wall repairs, custom wood cabinets by Heritage, limestone-tiled flooring, granite countertops and new appliances. The entire job took four weeks to complete.

In October 2007, when Mr. Coates visited again, “I was blown away,” he recalled, upon seeing the new kitchen. “It was a knockout.”

He was also pleased to see that Mr. Tooker had acted on another piece of advice. “I suggested he buy at least one high-end name-brand item and the rest should be good, solid brands like GE Profile,” Mr. Coates said. The splurge was a built-in Bosch dishwasher. “That’s something I can put on the sell sheet.”

And Mr. Coates’s next bit of advice? Wait. With the holidays fast approaching, Mr. Coates said, he thought it was best to put the apartment on the market in January, after the holiday real-estate shopping lull. Mr. Tooker again heeded his advice, and in mid-January they listed the apartment for $879,000.

“We settled on that figure primarily due to a similarly sized apartment on a lower floor that sold for $850,000 in fall 2007,” Mr. Coates said. “Aside from the brand-new kitchen, Bill’s place had a better view and a window in the kitchen, so I felt comfortable starting out at a higher number.”

The listing went live on the Halstead Web site on a Monday, and the next day he got calls from brokers hoping to get their clients inside for a peek. “I think I showed it twice the first day by appointment,” Mr. Coates said. Later that Tuesday, he heard from another Halstead colleague who thought her clients would be very interested.

The eager apartment shoppers were Allison and Greg Reilly. They came to the apartment at 9 a.m. on Wednesday with their broker — and a dilemma. “We already had an accepted offer on a different place nearby, but we weren’t in contract yet,” said Mr. Reilly, 26, a lawyer.

But the other place needed a gut renovation, and as first-time buyers, the Reillys were feeling skittish. “We figured we had a day or two more before we had to turn in the paperwork,” said Mrs. Reilly, a structural engineer, also 26.

The couple said they hadn’t even spoken to each other while touring the apartment. But afterward, in the elevator ride down to the lobby, the truth came out. “We liked it better,” Mrs. Reilly said.

“It felt so big,” she recalled. “We never had a place that had room for a dining room table with chairs before. And the kitchen totally sold us.”

“The cabinets were the first thing I noticed,” Mrs. Reilly added. “We love dark wood.” What’s more, the cabinets, appealingly, opened upward, like the futuristic gull-wing doors of a DeLorean sports car, Mr. Reilly noted.

The granite countertop, glass-tile backsplash and stainless steel appliances were all a hit. “We thought, this is exactly how we would have done it had we done it ourselves — but without the stress,” Mrs. Reilly said.

The two conferred with their broker who phoned Mr. Coates a while later. Unbeknown to any of them, the previous day’s lookers had left a message with Mr. Coates offering close to asking price.

A flurry of phone calls ensued. The Reillys came back with a two-pronged offer — and rushed their financials to Mr. Coates. They put in a full asking price bid of $879,000 with the condition that Mr. Tooker would be out in four months, or an option of $890,000 if he could be out in three months, a time frame that coincided with the expiring lease on their apartment in Jersey City.

“It was more than we wanted to pay,” Mr. Reilly said, “but the maintenance on this place was the lowest of nearly all of the places we had seen.” The monthly payment is $871. In addition, the couple asked Mr. Tooker to forgo more showings of the apartment.

Mr. Tooker was willing to take his chances on buying a new place in a flash, and opted for the higher amount. “Once I learned that they were such solid buyers,” he said, “I didn’t hesitate. We had the contract signed in a week’s time.”

The quick deal offered him another advantage. “I had been through the whole open house thing once before,” he said, referring to a previous apartment. “Having to spend Sundays out of your apartment is not fun. I was happy not having to deal with that.”

Did he think the kitchen renovation had made a difference? “Absolutely, without a doubt,” he said.

The deal closed on May 7.

Aside from getting a place that they loved, the Reillys got something else that had seemed a distant fantasy: a short commute home after a night out on the town. “We used to have to take the E train to the World Trade Center stop and wait there forever for the PATH train,” Mr. Reilly said.

As for Mr. Tooker, he got something he had always wanted, too: no mortgage. He paid all cash for a large alcove studio on West 13th Street, with a spacious balcony to watch the sunset.

by nytimes.com