Luxury Realtor and designer Darren White built the $2.5 million penthouse Aqua Vista with an eye for high society. Swaddled in granite and Portuguese cork, the 29th-floor penthouse boasted a poolside cabana the size of a Tokyo apartment. So last month, White gathered his blueprints and joined a clutch of real estate elites at a private “pitch session” on Harbour Island. The group’s affinity to affluence, he hoped, would help seal its lucrative sale. “My target client is a sports guy. Luckily, I had a showing yesterday with a (Tampa Bay) Bucs player, so I guess I hit it,” White said, handing out glossy handbills calling the penthouse “unhindered . . . by budgetary constraints.” “Bring me the buyer.”
He had come to the right place. On all sides of the mahogany closing table, agents who over the last year had sold homes valued at more than $4 million were surveying listings they could bring back to their “most discerning” clientele.
In an industry where commissions are paid out on both sides, buyers’ and sellers’ agents often discover ways of getting along. In this massive mansion show-and-tell, every pitch had the potential to become a multimillion-dollar deal.