# What the Elevator Tells You

> The sales record tells you what a unit sold for. It does not tell you which renovation was done properly, or which owner is three months from listing.

By Bradley Sketchley, Global Real Estate Advisor, Resident of Park Towers. Published August 30, 2026.
Canonical: https://www.parktowersinsider.com/blog/what-the-elevator-tells-you/

Hello Neighbor,

An agent who works this building from outside sees Park Towers as a data set. Eighty four units, a sales history, a set of floor plans. All of it true, and all of it available to anyone willing to pull it.

I see the same building at seven in the morning in the garage. The two are not the same building.

## The contractor pattern

When a unit is about to come to market, it almost always announces itself months in advance, and the announcement is a service elevator that has been booked more than usual.

Painters first. Then flooring. Then, if the owner is serious, a staging truck. By the time a listing appears, I have usually watched the preparation for a full season and have a reasonable idea of what was done and how well.

That matters for a buyer, because "recently renovated" is a phrase with an enormous range inside it. There is a difference between a unit that was reconfigured properly over four months and one that was refreshed in three weeks to be sold, and the listing photographs are specifically designed to make those two look identical.

I do not have to guess which one I am looking at. I watched it happen.

## The parking garage

Parking spaces here change hands, and they do it quietly.

A space transferring between units is a small transaction that tells you something larger. Somebody is planning to keep two cars here full time. Somebody else has decided they no longer need the second one. Neither of those people has listed anything, and both of them have told me where their thinking is heading.

I also notice what is parked down there over time. Not out of nosiness, and I would not repeat any of it. It is simply that a building's fleet turns over before its ownership does, and when the cars change the residents are usually about to.

## The pool deck in September

You can learn the seasonality of a building by looking at its amenities in the shoulder months.

Through the summer the deck is empty for the obvious reason. In late September it fills back up, and who fills it up has changed over the years I have been watching. It used to be almost entirely people I had known since the build out. It is now a mix, and the newer half of that mix skews younger and is here on a different schedule, often working from the unit rather than retired into it.

The deck told me before the sales record did.

## Why I write any of this down

Because none of it is in a report, and all of it is in a price.

Five homes closed here in 2026. One sold in a single day, two in about a month, and two took the better part of half a year. The difference was decided long before any of them reached the market. I had watched most of it happen.

When I sit with an owner and talk about where their unit should be positioned, the comparable sales are the floor of the conversation. The rest of it is knowing that the unit two floors down was done properly and yours was not, or that the one across the hall is about to come to market and being first matters, or that the buyer who passed on a similar unit last spring is still looking and told me exactly what stopped them.

That is the whole case for a resident representing the building. It is not that I care more. It is that I am here, so the information arrives whether I go looking for it or not.

I live where I list. That is not a slogan about loyalty. It is a description of where the data comes from.

If you would like to know what I have noticed about your line, your floor, or the units around you, ask me. It costs nothing and it will not turn into a pitch.

Thank you, Bradley Sketchley