A true survivor

Shii Ann Huang swaps the jungles of Thailand for Manhattan's mean streets

 

From the jungles of Thailand to the concrete jungle of the New York City real estate scene, Shii Ann Huang, a vice president and associate broker with The Corcoran Group, has proven that she is a "Survivor."

 

And she's a popular one at that. Although she was "voted off the island" during the fifth installment of the hit show CBS "Survivor," Huang was one of the few contestants who were invited back to participate in the eighth installment, "Survivor: Allstars" in Panama.

 

She's a top agent at The Corcoran Group. She even has her own entry on Wikipedia.com.

 

But you won't find Huang, 34, talking too much about her "Survivor" days - in her mind, that was so five years ago. These days, she's focused on navigating the New York City real estate biz.

 

And she's much happier working on brokering deals on the island of Manhattan than she was brokering alliances on an island in Thailand.

 

"You have a combination of people, architecture, history and psychology," she said of her career during a recent interview at her office downtown.

 

Born in Taiwan, Huang and her family moved to Arizona when she was 10 years old. She moved to New York City in 1996, after graduating from the University of California, Berkeley. After she got her Master's from NYU, she worked as a headhunter when she was called to appear on "Survivor." The first Asian-American to appear on the show, she schemed her way to the final nine before she was voted off.

 

She returned to New York City and continued to work as a headhunter, but was dissatisfied. She liked recruiting - she just didn't like recruiting for the financial sector. But finances - or lack thereof - prevented her from becoming a broker.

 

"When you become a broker, you are creating your own company," Huang said. "You are a one-woman show." And Huang didn't have enough cash to produce the show.

 

But then another show called "Survivor." CBS wanted Huang back to appear on "Survivor: Allstars."

 

This time, she was offered more prize money for every day she lasted on the show. While she didn't win the $1 million grand prize, when Huang returned to New York City, she had enough to make her feel secure enough to get into the brokerage business.

 

She hasn't looked back since. Huang has been a member of The Corcoran Multi-Million Dollar Club since she joined the firm in 2004. People who are members of the club have to sell at least $8 million worth of real estate and upwards of $300 million.

 

In 2007, NRT recognized Huang as one of top agents in the company. Her clients tend to be professionals who are looking for apartments either on the Upper West Side, Downtown or Park Slope in the $1 million to $3 million range. And many don't know about her past. They care more about making a deal to buy an apartment than the deals Huang made on "Survivor."

 

"More often than not, my clients don't know about Survivor," she said. "Their friends will say, 'Your broker's name is just like that girl's on Survivor.' And they'll say, 'I don't watch that show!'"

 

Nowadays, neither does Huang. She has the DVD, but has never watched it. "I lived it - why do I have to watch it?" she said.

 

She says her husband, David, whom she met at a gallery opening in Carroll Gardens four years ago, didn't know she was on the show until a fan approached her while they were on a date and said in a conspiratal voice: "I liiiiked the waayy you plaayyeed the gaaaame."

 

"Thank God, to this day, he's never seen the show," Huang said. "I think that's why we are still married."

 

The comparisons between Huang's stints on Survivor and her day-to-day life as a broker in the country's most competitive real estate market are inevitable.

 

She said that while it's true that you have to be on top of your game to do well - she lists getting co-op board approval as one of the biggest challenges - there is plenty of room for the nice guys in the brokerage business.

 

"For every horror story you hear about real estate, there are a thousand nice stories you don't hear about," she said.

 

"The happy endings about brokers - no one wants to hear that story."

 

Huang, her husband and their infant daughter now live in the Gowanus area of Brooklyn.

 

"I love Manhattan," she said. "I would love to live there if I could afford it. I used to live in the East Village. Now I can't afford the East Village. If I win the Lotto, I would move into a doorman building in the city."

 

While many people lament the fact that lots of people have been priced out of the Manhattan, Huang said that it is part of the city's evolution.

 

"That's the cool thing about the city," she said.  "It's always changing. I don't want the city to be the way it used to be. If it's not changing, it would be a dead city."