The title is sales director, but Miriam Fernandez's job is matchmaker

Teetering in black pumps, Miriam Fernandez picks her way through the scattered studs, plastic sheeting and coils of cable littering the 30th floor of Waterview, a Rosslyn luxury condominium building. She points out where rooms and features will be. Right now, it's hard to envision that this construction zone will become a $6 million, 4,500-square-foot condo.

As Fernandez enters the unit, somehow without a speck of construction dust on her black suit with the silver buckle, the price tag starts to make more sense: Two walls of windows reveal a sweeping, panoramic vista of Georgetown, the monuments on the National Mall and the Potomac River.

The director of sales for McWilliams Ballard Inc. has a simple way of describing her job: "It's almost like Match.com"

Her goal is to set up high-end specialty properties for dates with potential buyers who are looking for specific qualities they want in a property.

At Waterview, the buyers come in many shapes, forms and ages, but all share a desire for an easy lifestyle, closeness to the District and luxury amenities. And a good view.

Fernandez is familiar with the process of poking around buyers' psyches.

She has been selling Washington-area homes for 25 years -- since the days when 19 percent mortgages were common and adjustable rate mortgages were just entering the scene.

"I've been very fortunate in my career that the communities I've done all had a very, very unique proposition," says the veteran of such luxury condo projects as Monument Place and Palisades Park, both in Arlington. "Either location, views, new design, that type of thing."

Waterview was designed by legendary architecture firm Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.

"This will become a destination," she says. "When you say, 'I live at Waterview,' they will know exactly where you live."

Source: Washington Business Journal. View Article.

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