Tatiana Cames started in real estate in the early 1990s, when she purchased and renovated a townhouse in the West Village. Now, she’s putting those renovation skills to work: she recently launched Townhouse Therapy, a website that gives guidance on buying, selling and restoring historic New York City townhouses. She talks home improvement with Voyeur.
What’s your next hottest nabe in NYC? Bedford-Stuyvesant, which has been on the radar as a new hot neighborhood for several years and is now exploding. There seems to be new businesses opening daily. I am buying and restoring houses in Bed-Stuy for rent and resale and think it is the best investment at the moment.
What’s the biggest mistake buyers make when looking for a home? They often do not look past bad renovation or clutter to see what the potential can be. They are often turned off by 4 houses in need of work. Often the work is not as scary as it may appear.
What did you do before you became a broker? I owned and managed a foreign language training school for business executives and a translation service company. We taught and translated over 100 languages.
In which era in NYC history would you want to be selling or living? I would have loved to be in Fort Greene, Bed-Stuy or Crown Heights in the 1970s and 80s and seen what people from the area are talking about. They talk about the drugs and the violence and often can’t believe how much it has changed. It’s hard to visualize what that was like.
