Upstate House

Clear, bright, winter light spills through the windows of the seaglass-hued study of a sprawling Arts and Crafts-style home in Cooperstown. Hillary Kolos, an agent with the Upstate Curious Team at Compass, and Jeni Gomez, the manager of the affiliated Curious Guesthouses business, pour a glass of whiskey into a snifter and place it on a table near the stone fireplace. Next to the glass, they strew a few puzzle pieces, artfully plucked from the one the property’s owners had left completed on the table. After two days of staging the stately home overlooking Otsego Lake, they were ready for the team’s staff photographer, Phil Mansfield, to begin capturing the intimate essence of the room.

Scenes like this play out almost daily across the Hudson Valley and Catskills, where Upstate Curious has become synonymous with a new style of real estate rooted in editorial-style storytelling, community building, and collaboration. In just six years, the brokerage team has grown from a solo shop run by associate real estate broker and Upstate Curious CEO Megan Brenn-White to a team of 36 agents supported by nine full-time staff, including three dedicated transaction coordinators who help agents keep track of all the moving parts of a sale.

In 2024, they held the number five spot for “mega teams” in New York State (number one for teams outside of New York City) according to RealTrends. In 2025, they are on track to have worked with nearly 400 clients to sell over $250 million in property.

Ask Brenn-White about those statistics and pretty quickly, she’ll pivot back to the people on the team. “There’s no question that our agents are exceptional as real estate advisors. Our selection, training, and support processes ensure that. What makes our team different is our culture of collaboration within and outside of the team, something that has played a less visible role in our success,” she says. “So many team members have had amazing careers before coming to real estate—and a lot of passions outside of work. They bring all of that experience and diversity to the table, which helps us learn from each other and be able to match clients with a great agent for them. And honestly, it’s also a lot of fun.”

Discovering a Seller’s Story

When the Cooperstown property—a luxury home with just shy of 15 wooded acres and 500 feet of private lake frontage—was referred to Upstate Curious by another Compass team in Washington, DC, Brenn-White, Kolos, and Gomez headed to Otsego County to explore.

They weren’t just there to catalog square footage and the home’s many historically minded details. They spent the day getting to know the village in more depth—grabbing lunch in the greenhouse cafe at Origins, browsing houseplants and handmade gifts at The Local Bird, and making note of cultural landmarks to add to the listing. They put together a town guide to help prospective buyers and the team’s nearly 72,000 Instagram followers get familiar with all there was to love about Cooperstown as well as the house itself. “It’s not just the Baseball Hall of Fame,” jokes Kolos, a senior agent who lives in neighboring Schoharie County and was the team’s natural fit for the seller’s agent.

After getting the lay of the land, they sat down with the sellers at their home to dive deep into what they love about the house and town where they’ve lived for over 20 years. They raised their two children there and dedicated themselves to community service—volunteering for the Glimmerglass Festival and serving on multiple arts and cultural nonprofit boards, including Hyde Hall and Otsego 2000.

“The sellers are so involved with Cooperstown and have a lot of connections to the community. I really just gave them space to talk about their lives there,” says Kolos, “We always listen for what might appeal to potential buyers. It could be hiking trails in Glimmerglass State Park, the restaurants, the various golf and sports clubs, the museums, you name it.”

This level of storytelling has become a hallmark of Upstate Curious’s process. It’s also been integral to their continued success as the team has grown to cover 14 counties, focused on the second home market within approximately three-and-a-half hours from New York City and a large market share in Ulster County where they are headquartered.

“Because we work almost exclusively with weekenders or new residents, we’re constantly exploring the region and trading tips about restaurants, great hikes, or new small businesses,” says Brenn-White. “To me, it’s nearly as important for all of us to be able to share that love and deep local knowledge for the region as it is to have our processes locked down.”

Making a House Feel Like a Home

Anyone who has ever drooled over an Upstate Curious listing on Instagram may not realize the staging, styling, and photography work that goes into making every house so aesthetically appealing.

Staging and styling are particular passions of senior agent Kate Quintard, who holds a BFA in Design from the Savannah College of Art and Design and worked in New York City as a fashion designer for almost a decade before getting her real estate license and quickly becoming the top agent at a major brokerage in the city.

When she moved to the Hudson Valley and joined the Upstate Curious Team, she naturally gravitated toward staging and styling homes in preparation for their listing photography, and she now often collaborates with other agents to get their own listings camera-ready.

With two storage units and a barn filled with furniture, linens, and art objects sourced from antique shops and local makers, Quintard’s staging library can outfit homes with all the things that make a listing photo pop—and her truck is almost always chock full of things she’s taking to or from a listing.

“We want every space to feel lived in, not sterile or staged within an inch of its life,” she says. Things that look good in person don’t always photograph well. The old-school staging approach where everything’s perfectly in place makes it difficult for someone to imagine themselves in a home. People don’t decorate like that—or live like that—anymore.”

Her version of lived-in chic might include an artfully unmade bed, a book and a cup of coffee on the nightstand, or a handmade vase from a Hudson Valley ceramicist filled with flowers and grasses foraged from the property. “It’s editorial, not cookie-cutter real estate,” she says. “Our goal is to make a space feel authentic.”

Staff photographer Phil Mansfield, a lifestyle and food photographer who has shot for the New York Times, Food & Wine, and Vogue Living, was looking for new opportunities when the pandemic put his job with the Culinary Institute of America on pause. “Serendipitously, Megan saw a house I had shot for a friend and fell in love with my style, and wanted it to be the underpinning of the visual style of Upstate Curious listings,” he says.

For Mansfield, authenticity in real estate photography can happen in a single imperfect moment that allows him to build an entire story. “Most real estate agencies want you in and out in an hour, but Megan has always let me spend the full day shooting if I need,” he says. He cites French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson’s concept of “the decisive moment” as his creative touchstone. “I’ll walk into a room and set up my camera and then wait for some sort of magic, like light streaming through a window,” he says. “I’m constantly looking for those unknowns that I didn’t know were going to be there.”

“A big part of our job is to get the highest price for our sellers,” says Brenn-White. “We always say that the first showing is online. A house has to look amazing in the photos to get someone to want to ask questions or schedule a showing. This is only getting more important, and we keep adding resources to help our agents make their clients’ homes look great. There are weekly office hours with Phil, a network of vendors, plus a growing library of styling items and furniture.”

Making Friends Out of Neighbors

Many agents are deeply involved in their towns—volunteering, coaching, and participating in local nonprofits. Nigel Hall, an agent who moved from New York City to Bovina with his family last year after years of weekending, sits on the board of Parks and Trails New York, coaches youth soccer, and is training with Catskill Search and Rescue.

 

“Going from a city of 8 million to a town with 600 people, you learn the importance of relying on your neighbors. We’ve become good friends with people who have been here for seven generations, and that’s so wonderful,” he says. “These relationships we’re building really help us understand the history and character of the towns that we’re working in every day.”

Hall also says that his knowledge of his community is vital to advising prospective buyers, who may think of “upstate” as a monolith, on towns and areas that would be a good fit for their lifestyle. “People want to feel more of a sense of privacy here, but they also want a connection to their town,” he says.

Of course, getting involved in community and civic life comes with the natural perks of discovering new homes and new neighbors, who often will choose to work with a real estate agent they know. For Hall and his colleagues, however, staying engaged is both natural and essential—an extension of the team’s passions for people and place.

“My philosophy has always been that if it’s good for the community and/or if it’s fun for us, we know it will also help the business. Ultimately, that means I can dedicate resources to some pretty awesome things,” says Brenn-White. “I help coach (i.e., hassle) the agents to take time to do the things that make them happy because this field and their driven natures mean that the natural inclination is just to work all the time. If they do what they love outside of work, they’re going to be happier and can create the business they want.”

As Upstate Curious continues to grow, Brenn-White remains focused on keeping its namesake curiosity at the center of everything. “It’s one of our core values for a reason,” she says. “For us, curiosity means learning new things, being creative, collaborating with each other, and loving where we live. Our team culture is a far cry from most of what you see on real estate reality shows—and we love it that way.”

Upstate Curious Team at Compass
Upstatecurious.com
(838)-UPSTATE
Info@upstatecurious.com
5145 Route 209
Accord, NY 12404