Querencia Palms — Palm Springs · Condominium Conversion
A 14-residence condominium conversion in South Palm Springs became one of the most demanding and rewarding projects of my career. It reinforced something I will probably carry with me forever: when the market does not immediately agree with you, the answer is not always to lower the price. Sometimes you need to make the product better, tell the story differently and find the people who understand what you created.
- Involvement
- Brokerage
- Pricing strategy
- Staging + presentation
- Landscape stewardship + aquatic planting
- Marketing + events
It was supposed to move quickly.
When the property was purchased, much of the condominium conversion process was already underway. The expectation was that finishing the project and selling the residences would be relatively straightforward. By late 2025, we were preparing for launch. Then the market changed. Sales slowed dramatically across the area, and the immediate demand we expected simply was not there.
The market said wait. Everyone else said drop the price.
We priced the residences where we believed the value made sense for renovated fee-land condominiums in South Palm Springs. As the units sat, opinions came quickly: reduce the prices, clear the inventory, take the loss and move on. There were moments when the pressure became enormous. But I kept coming back to the same question: was the product wrong, or had we not yet done enough to show people why it was worth buying? I believed it was the second.
Make the property impossible to ignore.
That meant getting involved in nearly every detail, starting with the grounds. I took over much of the landscape oversight and spent months bringing color, life and maturity back into the property. What happened around the koi pond turned into a story of its own.
The grounds
I never planned to become the gardener.
When we were preparing Querencia Palms for its grand opening, landscaping was supposed to be one of the things I did not have to worry about. Two days before the event, I arrived to find that much of the greenery around the koi pond had been pulled out and thrown away.
They were not weeds. They were aquatic and marginal plants that had been intentionally planted around the pond.
I spent the next two weeks watering the remaining roots and new growth every day, trying to bring the area back. It worked. Then the landscaping crew removed it again.
That was the moment I realized I could not keep watching the landscape disappear. I ended the relationship with the landscaping company and took over much of the work myself.
What started as damage control became an obsession.
At first, I was simply trying to get the property back to where it had been. Then something changed. The plants started responding. The grounds became greener. Owners, buyers and visitors began commenting on how much they loved it. And I started seeing what the property could become.
The koi pond was the biggest opportunity. It winds through the community, alongside private patios, beneath palms and past two waterfalls. Yet much of it had originally been rock, water and fish. I wanted it to feel less like a constructed water feature and more like a garden you discovered as you moved through the property.
The koi pond
From rocks and water to a living garden.
Winter made the transformation slow at first. There were not many aquatic plants available, so I worked with what I could find and waited for the seasons to change.
As spring approached, the selection became completely different. I started driving to Cherry Valley myself to visit the aquatic nursery, walking through the available plants and selecting them individually, one by one. Water lilies. Cannas. Papyrus. Flowering marginal plants. Different heights, textures, colors and growth habits. I would bring them back to Palm Springs and figure out where each belonged.
By that point, I was not just trying to make the pond greener anymore. I was trying to create a landscape that felt intentional from every angle. Because the pond runs alongside several residences, every planting changed more than the water feature. It changed someone’s patio, walkway, view or arrival home.
I would drive to Cherry Valley and select the aquatic plants individually, one by one.
The difference wasn’t subtle.
As the landscape matured, spaces that had once felt exposed began to feel private, established and alive. The architecture did not change. The experience of it did.
Drag the divider to compare.
The details I started looking for.
Eventually, I started looking forward to the smallest changes. A new flower. A plant finally taking hold. The first water lily opening. A dragonfly appearing beside the pond.
Those details have almost nothing to do with selling a condominium on paper. But they have everything to do with creating a place someone wants to come home to.
Learning as I went
The garden club came with me.
Around the same time, I joined the Village of La Jolla Garden Club. What began as an enjoyable way to learn more about plants quickly became surprisingly practical.
I found myself taking what I was learning and experimenting with it at Querencia, paying more attention to form, color, seasonal change, pruning, growth habits and how a landscape develops over time. The more I learned, the more I noticed. And the more I noticed, the more I wanted to improve.
The water feature became a garden.
As the plantings matured, the pond changed completely. Stone softened. The waterfalls became framed by foliage. Flowers appeared through different seasons. Water lilies opened across the surface. Dragonflies began visiting. The koi moved through plants instead of simply through water.
What had originally felt like an amenity slowly became one of the defining experiences of the property.
Care is something buyers can feel.
Nobody toured Querencia and knew how many hours I spent watering plants back to life. They did not know which aquatic varieties had been difficult to source in winter. They did not know how many times I moved something because it was not thriving, or how many trips I made looking for something better.
They did not need to. They could feel the result. The property looked cared for.
Querencia taught me that buyers experience that care long before they understand exactly what they are responding to. Landscaping stopped being maintenance. It became part of how we presented the property.
The spaces between the buildings matter too.
Real estate is not experienced as a list of specifications. People experience the arrival. The path to the front door. Privacy from a patio. Flowers along a walkway. The sound of water. Shade. Color. The feeling that somebody cared enough to notice the details.
All of it becomes part of the property.
Stage. Clean. Present. Repeat.
Then came the units. Paint splatter on windows, fingerprints, small imperfections — tiny things buyers might never consciously mention, but their brain still registers. I went through the residences obsessively: clean, correct, stage, present, repeat.
Marketing to the people who already knew the buyer.
Once the physical presentation was right, I focused on visibility. Open houses became events. Agents were invited back. Vendors, food, music and community were incorporated when appropriate. I increased my involvement across Palm Springs organizations and made sure people knew what Querencia Palms was. The goal was simple: get people through the gates. Once they experienced the property, the work could speak for itself.
One of the most important changes was recognizing that I did not need to personally find every buyer — I needed more agents actively thinking about Querencia Palms. By creating incentives and encouraging agents to look inside their own networks for people who matched the property, showing activity increased. Then contracts started coming, and the momentum changed.
The market didn't need a fire sale. It needed a reason to pay attention.
The residences began going into escrow at full asking price. More importantly, buyers moving into the community began validating what we believed from the beginning. The landscaping, architecture, water features, amenities and intimate scale created the sense of place we had worked so hard to communicate. What once felt like an impossible launch became one of the clearest examples in my career of why presentation, patience and creative marketing matter.
Price is only one part of the equation.
Sellers often ask me whether staging matters, whether a small repair matters, whether landscaping matters. Querencia Palms eliminated any doubt in my mind. Buyers experience property emotionally before they analyze it logically. Something can be technically correct and still feel wrong. Sometimes the answer is price. But sometimes the answer is removing the distraction, improving the experience and giving someone enough reasons to imagine themselves there. Knowing the difference is the important part.
- Residences
- 14
- Fee-land condominiums
- South Palm Springs
- Escrows opened at asking price
- Full ask
