By: KeyCrew Media

When Mukul “Micky” Lalchandani tells a client to walk away from a property, he means it — even when it costs him a commission. That willingness to put the client’s long-term outcome above the short-term transaction is the founding principle of Undivided, his boutique NYC residential brokerage, and the reason his clients keep calling.

From Hong Kong to New York

Raised in Hong Kong in a family of real estate investors, Lalchandani came to New York with an outsider’s eye and an investor’s instincts. After a disappointing experience with local brokers — too transactional, too focused on closing rather than advising — he decided to build something different. Undivided launched as a brokerage designed around one idea: fewer clients, deeper work, and better outcomes.

“I more often don’t recommend a property than I recommend one,” he says. “There are a lot of bad properties in this market, and with enough experience, you can spot them quickly. Our job is to protect clients from those as much as it is to find the right ones.”

A Decade of Experience, and a Different Kind of Brokerage

With over a decade of experience in NYC’s luxury residential market, Lalchandani has worked with first-time luxury buyers, seasoned investors, and international clients from Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, and the UK. 

According to the firm, Undivided has guided hundreds of clients since launching its current advisory model, with total buyer savings running into the millions – achieved through pricing strategy, sponsor incentives, and concessions that extend well beyond the headline number.

Before advising a client on any property, Lalchandani runs the numbers: absorption rates, price per square foot by line and floor, resale history in the building, and how the unit is likely to perform for a future buyer. “The purchase decision is really a resale decision made early,” he says. “We’re underwriting the exit before we fall in love with the view.”

Showing Clients What New York Actually Looks Like

His clients are predominantly professionals in tech, finance, and medicine, shopping in the $5 million-plus tier. Most arrive with strong opinions about where they want to live, shaped by reputation and media rather than local market data. Part of Lalchandani’s process is redirecting those assumptions — showing them SoHo, which is largely commercial and lacks basic residential infrastructure like grocery stores, and then showing them what the same budget delivers somewhere with stronger resale fundamentals.

One of his most instructive deals: a San Francisco tech couple, convinced they needed SoHo, ended up in a Gramercy penthouse — brand new construction, private rooftop, the only unit on their floor, negotiated from $8 million to $7 million. The building had reached a point in its sales cycle where the developer was prioritizing absorption over price, a pattern Lalchandani tracks deliberately across new developments. Four years later, comparable units are trading near $8.6 million.

“That outcome wasn’t luck,” he says. “It was knowing where the developer was in the sales cycle and what they needed to close. That’s the kind of analysis that can make the difference.”

Discretion as a Standard, Not a Feature

Privacy is another pillar of Undivided’s practice. High-net-worth clients on both sides of a transaction increasingly expect their activity to stay off the public record. Lalchandani once declined a major publication’s offer to feature a $17 million Central Park sale because the client didn’t want any trace of it online. He honored that without hesitation.

With spring 2026 approaching and interest rates potentially dipping toward 5%, Lalchandani expects the $5 million-plus market to grow considerably more competitive. His advice is consistent: get on an advisor’s radar before you’re ready to move, not after. In a market where the best properties trade privately before they’re ever publicly listed, timing your entry to the public market may be too late.

“My job isn’t to show clients apartments,” he says. “It’s to show them which apartment is more likely to still make sense five years from now — and which ones may not.”

Mukul “Micky” Lalchandani is the founder and managing broker of Undivided, a boutique NYC luxury real estate brokerage specializing in luxury condominiums and new developments.