Scroll through any popular real estate feed, and you'll find the same fantasy played out over and over: a tired single-family house gets a fresh coat of paint, some new marble and maybe a statement chandelier or two, then the asking price gets cranked up. It's the HGTV archetype, aspirational but accessible, a tidy way to torture oneself while waiting to buy a fixer-upper of one's own. Once in a while, someone manages to perform the same upgrade and finish it at a much higher price than expected.
According to Realtor.com, as syndicated by SFGate, Real Housewives of New York City alum Bethenny Frankel sold her remodeled SoHo loft for its asking price, just under $7 million, in a deal reported in September 2022. She had bought it for $4.2 million in 2017. This Manhattan renovation closed at the number the listing asked for, a result worth examining on its own terms, but one that comes with some important qualifiers.
