Sherry Tobak Builds Out at Corcoran
After an esteemed in-house tenure working alongside some of New York City’s most consequential developers, the longtime Related exec has a new career blueprint: growing a sales team at Manhattan’s No. 1 residential brokerage. She’s assembling a world-class luxury real estate consultancy, leveraging more than 30 years of experience and connections.
Pulling a hardly infrequent late night in the early 2010s, Sherry Tobak gathered her colleagues, uncorked two bottles of wine, and got to work brainstorming the names for the first two residential buildings at Hudson Yards, the first new NYC neighborhood built from the ground up in generations. The deadlines were looming as construction reached skyward — the stakes, at least in a metaphorical sense, as high as the structures themselves. They sat and deliberated until their lightbulbs collectively went off. “By the end of the night, we realized their identities had to be numbers — 15 Hudson Yards, 35 Hudson Yards,” said Tobak, then charged with leading the project’s sales team.
Such moments are emblematic of Tobak’s legendary real estate career. Over the past three decades, the native New Yorker, born and raised on the Upper West Side, has had a hand in some of the city’s highest-profile new developments, from crafting their personalities in the predevelopment stage to research and analysis, pricing strategy, and overseeing boots-on-the-ground sales teams. As SVP of Sales at Related, she successfully oversaw billions in record-breaking sales for one of the world’s largest development firms, including more than $3 billion alone at Hudson Yards.
Tobak’s journey started like many do in New York real estate. Fresh out of college, she followed a friend’s lead by breaking into the business as a rental agent. “I’d go around with her to look at apartments and I thought, well, this is a fun way to make money.” She stuck with the grind for a while before taking a particular interest in new development, which led her to take an admin role at a ground-up condominium build. Before long, she talked her way into what she really wanted: a sales job. From that point forward, Tobak’s career bounced from one project to the next. “Somehow, the word would get out and I would hear from another developer, and then another and another — Brodsky, Zeckendorf, Eichner, Arun Bhatia, Sherwood Equities. I was all over the place for a while, but it opened the doors for me and gave me a name in New York City.”
“We were literally redefining the landscape of New York City,
and that just felt so extraordinary to me.”
Tobak (right) and Mary Ann Osborn (left).
In 2005, after climbing the ladder with other household-name movers and shakers, she joined Related as SVP of Sales. Though her first charge was The Veneto in Midtown East, the gravitational pull of the West Side quickly lured her focus to Time Warner Center (now Deutsche Bank Plaza), where she was tasked with selling the final residential units in the complex. From there, the hits kept coming. There was Astor Place in NoHo, 225 Rector in Battery Park City, Riverwalk Court on Roosevelt Island, and a handful of collaborations with Robert A.M. Stern, including The Harrison on West 76th Street.
Following her wild success with Carnegie Park, the firm’s conversion of a sprawling 94th Street rental into an amenity-laden luxury condominium, Tobak was asked to take on Hudson Yards, a game-changing opportunity she calls “the job of a lifetime.” When she arrived, only the first office building had gone up, half over the train yards, half on terra firma. “We were literally redefining the landscape of New York City, and that just felt so extraordinary to me, turning this deserted rail yard into the most significant and ambitious development in modern American history,” she said. “We took so much pride in what we were doing.”
In the earliest days, she recalls, the work was relentless — endless meetings with architects David Rockwell and Liz Diller, along with key stakeholders at Related and Corcoran Sunshine. Together, they shaped floor plans, designed lobbies, and selected every detail, from stone and flooring to appliances, all with an eye toward market competitiveness. Tobak personally led the hiring of a 17-person onsite team, a process she describes as highly selective. She still marvels at the Sales Center, which featured impressive mock-ups showcasing the residences, offices, shops, and even the development’s cultural centerpiece, The Shed.
Product mix for each building was considered at length, with the team deciding 35 should have fewer, larger apartments with grand entrances and spacious eat-in kitchens — no one-bedrooms. “The scope of it all was so massive, and the story so multifaceted, that it was hard to help buyers imagine what they would one day experience, because there was nothing — literally, nothing — for them to see.”
By the end of the first year, the first building, 15 Hudson Yards, was half-sold.
After 20 remarkable years at Related, Tobak sought a new challenge, to carve her own path in a way that reflected her own passions in the business. “It was clear the time had come to take what I had learned — not just from Related, but from my prior experience working with other developers — and channel it all into something I could call my own,” she explained. “I wanted to push myself harder, to broaden my horizons.”
Cody, an honorary member of the Sherry Tobak Team at Corcoran.
The answer to that call came from outside the house. Enter the Sherry Tobak Team at Corcoran, a culmination of Tobak’s proven 30-year record shaping New York City’s luxury real estate landscape. For her first recruit, she turned to Mary Ann Osborn, her former West Coast counterpart at Related (now back in New York), to bring a bicoastal sensibility. Together, they aim to serve a discerning clientele with unmatched insight and a true insider’s perspective.
When not in Manhattan, you’ll most likely find Tobak traveling or at her second home on Long Island — almost certainly in the company of her poochon (poodle-bichon), Cody, who she and her husband rescued from No Dog Left Behind in East Hampton. “I honestly don’t know if I rescued him or he rescued me,” she remarked.
Having spent so much time working on one project at a time, Tobak also looks forward to widening her lens, doing business across the map in the city she loves. She’s particularly excited to do deals back where it all started, on the Upper West Side. “You know, I knew the original Barney Greengrass: the man,” she asserted proudly, as only a true New Yorker could.
