With 13-plus years of experience and more than $400 million in gross sales across 115-plus deals in the East End real estate market, Antonio Bottero is proud of the success of the Luxe Advisory Team he helms as an associate broker at Compass Real Estate.
“We cover the entire western portion of the Hamptons, from Sagaponack to Remsenburg,” says Bottero who is personally based out of Westhampton Beach, Southampton and Sag Harbor.
Growing up in Manhattan, Bottero developed an early appreciation for real estate on frequent visits to his grandparents’ Upper West Side brownstone which stood apart from the connected apartments where everyone else seemed to reside.
“I always loved being there, because it was a real house,” Bottero says. “It had stairs; it had a basement; it had a backyard.”
A former art major, Bottero found himself over the years keenly interested in architecture and home design, inevitably leading to a career in real estate.
“Getting to go into some of these houses and seeing people’s creative minds work or seeing how somebody decorated something or how they laid out a room, it’s just an interesting and amazing thing to be a part of,” he says.
Diversity Is Our Strength
A quartet of real estate professionals, the Luxe Advisory Team boasts a diversity of experience and backgrounds.
Ashley DeCabia, a part-time agent who doubles as a telecommunications sales consultant, concentrates on the real estate market west of the Shinnecock Canal and is based out of Westhampton Beach.
Based out of Southampton, Josh Seidner, is an agent and an architect whose specialty is finding properties and flipping them. Frequently, Seidner will work closely with a buyer to customize a new home.
“He’ll offer different concepts to that buyer, in sort of a custom homebuilding scenario,” Bottero says. “He also will buy properties and convert them into rentals as well.”
A former private chef for a Fortune 500 family, Seis Kamimura works out of Compass’ Bridgehampton office.
“The great thing about him is he’s got a network of clients that no one else in the real estate business has,” Bottero says. “It’s such a different type of clientele that he transacts and deals with.”
One of the things Bottero is most proud of is his team’s diversity.
“Everybody comes from different walks of life, and dynamically we perform differently,” says Bottero, adding that DeCabia is detail-oriented, aggressive and bubbly; Seidner excels at any and all building and construction matters; and Kamimura is an all-around agent.
“Not every agent is a great fit for just any client,” notes Bottero.
Focus on the Hamptons
Selling both primary and secondary homes, Bottero was actually Compass Real Estate’s founding agent for the North Fork.
“Back in 2017 and 2018, I was the only one in Compass doing business on the North Fork,” Bottero says.
Despite his prescient ventures into the North Fork market, Bottero now concentrates his efforts almost exclusively on the western end of the Hamptons: from Westhampton Beach (where he’s lived for the past 17 years) to Sagaponack, with sellers, yet all over the Hamptons with buyers.
These days, he refers potential deals to other agents and teams on the North Fork. “If it’s in the most western portion of the North Fork that’s accessible for me, I’ll work with people,” Bottero says.
“But once it gets to a certain distance, you really do a disservice to the client, if it’s a listing. I have agreements already in place with other teams and agents that I work with. At some point it’s best to refer the client out,” says Bottero, adding, “You have to know your market. And you must know the inventory, which is really important.”
Bottero also checks in weekly with an extensive network of 40 of Compass’ top teams and agents across the country, as well as at other brokerages, with whom he does a lot of crossmarketing.
“It’s a really great way to stretch your web out and cast from a larger buyer or seller pool,” he says, noting that Florida, Texas and California are all big feeder markets to the Hamptons.
Lasting Relationships
Representing both buyers and sellers, Bottero says his business is fundamentally based on relationships.
“I feel that when you build a relationship with somebody, every good job you do for a person is worth five referrals from that person,” he says.
“Networking to me and building relationships are the most valuable assets you can have in real estate — not doing deals.”
If an agent is doing a good job for a buyer or seller and focusing on their needs, deals will happen naturally, Bottero avers.
Assessing what the sellers’ goals are, including their timeline, is essential, as is determining what buyers are looking for and what they’re willing to pay.
“It’s not just about plugging some data into a listing system and sending listings out and seeing if they like something or not,” Bottero explains. “A lot of buyers can fall to the wayside that way. It’s very important to reach out to those clients on a regular basis.”
Playing the Long Game
The Luxe Advisory Team engages with every type of listing or buyer, “from a bed and breakfast on the North Fork to a condo buyer in Westhampton to a celebrity selling on Dune Road,” Bottero says.
True success in real estate entails planning ahead.
“The long game for this business is to treat everybody — whether they’re buying a $100 million house or a $1 million house or a $500,000 house — the same,” Bottero says.
The Luxe Advisory Team also works in the rental market in the Hamptons, and in 2022 completed over $1 million in rental transactions. This past summer, with many people traveling to Europe, the market dipped, but the team still eked out $500,000 in rentals.
Predicting a hot summer rental season for 2024, Bottero says, “You have to work in the rental market in the Hamptons because renters become buyers and landlords become sellers. Again, it’s back to that relationship: networking and staying in touch with people and keeping yourself top of mind with them.”
For Bottero, the greatest satisfaction of all comes from keeping his customers satisfied.
“The thing that makes me the happiest: seeing the smile on somebody’s face when you did a good job for them,” he says.
PARTNER CONTENT
This article appeared on the cover of Behind The Hedges’ December 15, 2023 issue. Read the full issue online here.
