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They are beautifully finished, fabulously furnished and ready for you to move right in. Gone are the days of simple staging to help a buyer visualize a space. Nowadays it seems high-styled model units are opening doors for big sales.

"Our model units are the foundation of our marketing strategy. We’ve done 12 units. It resulted in 36 sales. Because we sold those 12 and others like them. In aggregate about $80 million worth of sales," says Brian Fallon of O’Connor Capital Partners.

At the Manhattan House for example on the Upper East Side, they brought in big name well-known interior designers to outfit their spaces. Instead of having to use their imagination to visualize living in a home, designers help show buyers all the possibilities.

"So what these units do is they allow people to see in some cases extreme examples of either traditional or contemporary expression of interior design, but somewhere in the middle they seem themselves living in the unit," explains Fallon.

Uptown at 5th on Park, they too have invested in their models and it’s paid off.

"As soon as I model an apartment, I sell it. I sell it so fast the paint is hardly dry. I have to bring all the furniture up to a new apartment and then I sell it again," says 5th On The Park Vice President and Sales Manager Sheree Yellin.

At 5th, a designer recently filled an apartment with affordable furnishings from well-known retail stores. The goal was to send the message that living there can be luxurious, yet affordable.

The models have not only sold apartments, but generated business for the designer who has been hired by a number of tenants.

The model units are designed to help buyers feel right at home, and some feel so at home they want to buy the unit as is.

"Often people will say, 'I would like to buy this unit exactly as it is.' And then we wind up in a negotiation over the value of the real estate and the value of the furnishings and decorations, but we’ve sold more than a few of those just like that," says Fallon.

So sales teams have certainly raised the bar, and now are not only selling a place to live but also a lifestyle.