Good contacts are the main point of brokers business. But to use social media and messaging app to close $13 million deal, it’s very brave. NYC realtor, Yue (Emma) Hao recently used the messaging app WeChat to sell two properties in downtown Manhattan for $13 million. Hao, a broker with Douglas Elliman received an unsolicited message on WeChat from a Chinese investor who was interested in buying a home in the swanky Baccarat Hotels & Residences on New York’s West 53rd Street. The building, which is under construction, will have 61 units, priced from about $3 million to about $60 million.
Hao visited the project’s sales center and sent the buyer pictures of the condominium. The next day, after connecting with the prospect by telephone, Hao inked a deal for two condos in the building – one worth $10.5 million three-bedroom apartment and the other a $3 million one-bedroom unit on a lower floor.
Hao used WeChat to set up a group chat and included assigned attorneys to help complete the deal. She told the Journal that this was the biggest deal she had ever done through the app.
Manhattan-based broker Ryan Serhant has found a way to make WeChat, a messaging app which dominates the Chinese market and is similar to What’sApp, nearly as lucrative for him as it has been for the app’s creator, TenCent.
“This price for a deal that was done and initiated 100 percent through social media and across the world?” Serhant was quoted as saying in the New York magazine story. “A complete stranger who learned about us via social media and basically gave us $13 million and change to invest in something that’s not even been built yet in a city they’ve never even been to? I don’t think [anyone else has done that],” he added.
