Hunted. Sourced. Bought.

The brief

The buy-side at 181 Richards Street — a 2013 Ben Bischoff / MADE Build/Design luxury townhouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn featured in Dwell and in Rizzoli's New York Living: Reinventing Home — closed on May 25, 2021 at $2,740,000, $210,000 under the seller's last published asking price of $2,950,000 (−7.1%).

The home was not actively listed when we approached the seller. Its previous listing had expired, and our outbound campaign opened a direct conversation that led to a purchase without competing offers or a public relisting.

The outbound sourcing framework

The client's brief was specific: a 3,000+ square-foot architecturally significant residence with substantial private outdoor space in a Brooklyn neighborhood with distinct cultural-and-creative-community character, at a price point that supported the long-term family-residence horizon the acquisition was anchored to. We mapped the broader Brooklyn inventory — Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, Williamsburg, Greenpoint, the Red Hook waterfront — and toured more than twenty homes across the active public listing inventory before the right cohort came into focus: architecturally distinctive newer construction or substantively renovated townhouses in the Red Hook / Carroll Gardens waterfront-adjacent corridor.

We then ran an outbound sourcing campaign:

• Cold-messaging to off-market sellers — direct outreach to owners of architecturally distinctive Red Hook / Carroll Gardens / Cobble Hill townhouse inventory whose properties were not actively listed, framing a substantive qualified-buyer conversation that respected the seller's not-on-the-market posture
• Expired-listing follow-up — direct outreach to sellers whose prior listing arcs had expired without clearing, on the read that a defensibly-priced buyer engagement could re-open the transaction without re-listing the property
• Architect and design-community network outreach — direct outreach to the architecture-and-design community in the Red Hook corridor (the residents and the design professionals who knew the inventory inside the corridor's small architecturally-significant cohort), framing the buyer's specific brief and asking for introductions to owners considering a transaction without a public marketing arc

181 Richards Street surfaced through this outreach. The owner was willing to discuss a sale without relisting publicly.

The residence

181 Richards is a 2013-built 4-bedroom, 2.5-bath, 3-story luxury townhouse designed by Ben Bischoff of MADE Build/Design. The architectural register has been documented in Dwell and in Rizzoli's New York Living: Reinventing Home. The interior carries the materials palette the design is anchored to — extensive poplar wood detail through the millwork, headboard walls, room dividers, and the triple-story bookcase staircase that the architectural design centers on; polished radiant-heated concrete flooring throughout the principal living levels; floor-to-ceiling glass doors opening from the public-room program to the substantial private outdoor space; and a rubbed-aluminum exterior that signals the home's architectural register at the street.

The kitchen and dining area form one open space, with wood cabinets, a long island and bar seating, a stainless-steel range and hood, and concrete floors. Glass doors open to the deck and the 1,700+ square feet of private outdoor space.

The dining area is shown with a live-edge wood table, a chandelier with glass-fruit pendants and large abstract artwork beside the garden doors.

The living room is next to the kitchen and dining area. A wood-clad bookshelf wall on the left carries the apartment's poplar detailing, and a picture window lights the seating area. The modern shaker wood-burning fireplace that the listing brief documents sits at the other end of the room.

The third-floor primary suite has a poplar headboard wall and polished concrete flooring. The prior listing described a custom-finished bath and an adjoining private gym or office.

The second floor contains two bedrooms with walk-in closets, a family room and laundry facilities.

The office or study has a wood-clad divider with curtain panels that can partition the space.

The upper-level gym or study opens to the roof deck. The listing described views of Downtown Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty and the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge.

The architecture

181 Richards is a documented work of architectural significance. The design is by Ben Bischoff of MADE Build/Design — the architecture-and-build firm that has produced a meaningful body of contemporary residential work across New York and that has carried the home through Dwell magazine coverage and inclusion in Rizzoli's New York Living: Reinventing Home monograph. For buyers whose criteria include architectural-press recognition, design-community provenance, and the resale-and-prestige register that an architecturally documented residence carries, 181 Richards delivers the substantive credential.

The design signatures: the rubbed aluminum exterior that signals the residence at the street, the 6-foot lift above ground that creates the storage program for bicycles, sports equipment, and vehicle accommodation underneath the first floor, the curb cut with parking for 2 additional vehicles at the front of the home, the triple-story bookcase open staircase that the design's vertical-circulation program is built around, the extensive poplar wood detail through the millwork and the room dividers, the polished radiant-heated concrete floors throughout the principal living levels, the 2 skylights and oversized windows delivering the natural light that the design's open-floorplate program is calibrated to receive, and the 1,700+ square-foot private outdoor program — deck plus the substantial lush rear garden — that the architecture frames as an extension of the interior.

The location

Red Hook is one of Brooklyn's most distinct corridors. Waterfront access three blocks south of the residence; the NYC ferry to Wall Street at a 15-minute crossing; the substantive retail-and-grocery anchor at Food Bazaar (formerly Fairway Market) and the broader Red Hook food-and-beverage corridor including Steve's Authentic Key Lime Pies, the cultural-anchor visual-arts community at Pioneer Works, and the substantive small-craft and design-community presence that has defined the neighborhood's contemporary creative identity. The block-level character at 181 Richards is substantively residential with the cultural-and-creative-community register that Red Hook carries — quieter than the active Carroll Gardens commercial spine, less heavily-trafficked than the broader DUMBO and Williamsburg waterfront corridors, with the specific community feel that the brief was anchored to.

Looking beyond active listings?

A 30-minute consultation can cover the type of home, location and budget, and whether outreach to off-market owners or expired listings is appropriate for the search.