Who

Known for selling apartments in newly-gentrified neighborhoods, Luchnick is one of the leading real estate brokers in Brooklyn.

Backstory

Luchnick started out her professional life as a schoolteacher and moved into real estate in 1981 when she enlisted three partners to help her condo-ize the Greene Street industrial building that housed her antique dealer husband's store. When the project was concluded, the Elliman broker who'd assisted on the sale of the condos recruited Luchnick to become an Elliman broker herself. Luchnick promptly set out to sell properties in under-served neighborhoods below 14th Street like SoHo and Chelsea, and in 1993 helped co-found Elliman's downtown division. During the 1990s, she gained a rep marketing industrial buildings undergoing conversion into lofts (such as the SoHo's New Museum Building) and serving as sales agent on a number of splashy downtown developments (like the Atalanta Building in Tribeca). In the early '00s, she directed her focus to the gentrification hot zones in Brooklyn.

Of note

Real Estate Weekly once published an article about Luchnick titled "Helene's Got the Sixth Sense." That sums up the standard line on Luchnick—she has an uncanny ability to tell which neighborhood is going to gentrify next. Easily the dominant broker in Williamsburg, in recent years she's handled sales and marketing for a slew of developments in the neighborhood, including 170 Broadway, Bedford Court, and 299 Bedford Avenue. More recently, she was the exclusive agent for two-towered, 215-unit Schaefer Landing, the first high-end development on the Williamsburg waterfront. She's now hawking units at Williamsburg developments 20 Bayard and 55 Berry. But she continues to do some business in Chelsea, and recently acted as the exclusive agent for 144 West 18th Street.

Trophy case

Luchnick has won Elliman's "Broker of the Year" award four times. In 2002, she was forced to split it with Dolly Lenz.

Personal

Luchnick seems to have fallen for her own pitch. She and her husband live at 1 Main, otherwise known as the Brooklyn Clock Tower, where her upstairs neighbor is real estate developer David Walentas.

No joke

Luchnick takes "partial credit" for coining the neighborhood name Nolita. Which part of it remains unclear.