Owning Manhattan Season 2 was filled with jaw-dropping real estate deals, from the $60 million sale of 150 Charles, to Chloe Tucker Caine‘s brilliant musical that sold a listing for $5 million. But Jessica Markowski‘s listing for a $7 million one-bedroom apartment in Tribeca certainly took the cake as one of the most interesting negotiations featured on this season of the hit Netflix show.
As seen in the Season 2 premiere, Markowski was working to sell a one-bedroom apartment on Washington St. for $7 million. Not only was she friends with the seller—serial entrepreneur Alfonso Cobo, who sold his company, Unfold, to Squarespace for a whopping $50 million—but she was also representing a buyer who put in an offer at $6.9 million. With the seller’s counter at full asking price, they ultimately came to an unlikely compromise: the apartment could go for $6.925 million and the buyer would take the furniture (sans the art and the mattress, which the seller wanted to keep “out of spite”). Thankfully, the buyer was already invested in a mattress company, as one typically is.
“I never had to deal with a negotiation over mattresses,” Markowski told DECIDER when she stopped by our studio ahead of Season 2 dropping on Netflix. “But, you know, whatever got us to the finish line, I’ll take it. But yeah, it was fun. It was a fun moment, for sure.”
According to the realtor—who works under the Bogard New York Team, a top-producing team at Ryan Serhant’s eponymous brokerage—it’s not unusual for clients to nit-pick “minor things” in a sale of that caliber.
“It’s part of the job, right?” Markowski said. “Whether it’s the mattress or the art piece or the vase or the plant, it comes to little minor things.”
Markowski, for her part, has largely been able to stay out of the drama this season. After joining ex-SERHANT agent/Season 1 villain Jonathan Nørmolle in trashing an up-and-coming realtor—Savannah Gowarty—in a podcast filmed in Season 1, Markowski has been keeping her “eyes on the prize” when it comes to her career, meaning she won’t be hopping on a podcast to drag her fellow co-stars again anytime soon.
Photo: Brian Zak / New York Post
With that ordeal taking up a good chunk of Season 1’s drama, no one expected Gowarty—who ultimately left SERHANT after they wrapped filming—to appear in Season 2. Yet, she happened to run into both Markowski and Tucker Caine at Peter Zaitzeff’s listing, resulting in a tearful apology from Markowski for the way she treated her last season.
“I remember that scene as if it was yesterday,” Markowski said. “We arrived to Peter’s listing, and I saw Savannah, and I haven’t seen her in a very long time. It’s saddened me to lose her and to put her through all that I did. It was really raw and natural.”
“I shed a tear and it just came from the bottom of my heart,” she continued. “I felt very sorry for what I put her through, and I’m happy that this was documented on Season 2, because it was a real organic moment that came out of the blue for me.”
Markowski said that she and Gowarty are “cordial,” though she noted that she’s been “so busy” with her career that she hasn’t had much time to foster a deeper friendship with the former SERHANT agent.
“As I said, I work on the top No. 1 producing team at the company,” she told us. “I am really busy even though people don’t believe it. Like, I’m genuinely overwhelmed, booked and busy. And it’s hard to keep up with everyone right now because my eyes are on the prize and Ryan knows that.”
Owning Manhattan Season 2 is currently streaming on Netflix.