By Katherine Clarke and Lauren Elkies

From left: Adina Azarian, the former CEO of Keller Williams NYC, Ilan Bracha, chairman of KWNYC, Eric Barron, the new CEO of KWNYC, and the company’s new office at 425 Park Avenue

Adina Azarian has stepped down from her role as CEO of the real estate franchise Keller Williams NYC after just seven months to take a more junior position at the company, the company informed The Real Deal today. Azarian will take the job of executive director of new business development.

Azarian, who joined the company in April after being recruited by now-defunct Dwelling Quest colleague Ilan Bracha, chairman of Keller Williams NYC, told The Real Deal she “initiated” the executive changes and chose her replacement. Eric Barron, a former managing director at the New York Real Estate Institute, took over as CEO Nov. 14, according to the company. [more]

Ilan Bracha, chairman of Keller Williams NYC, and Adina Azarian, CEO

Manhattan brokerage Keller Williams NYC, the local franchise of Keller Williams Realty, has expanded its workforce to 100 agents since active hiring began in April, the company announced yesterday.

“Our agent-friendly environment and entrepreneurial spirit is attracting some of the most talented and motivated people in New York City real estate to the firm,” said Adina Azarian, CEO of Keller Williams NYC. “They are drawn to the company’s unique business model, which focuses heavily on training, and offers a support system that both encourages and rewards success.”

Some of the firm’s most notable new hires include Eric Lustgarten, formerly president of the William B. May Company and director of sales and investment properties at Brown Harris Stevens and Hela Miodownik, formerly a vice president at Prudential Douglas Elliman. — Katherine Clarke [more]

New Director of Residential Rentals Declan Devlin and Keller Williams CEO Adina Azarian

Keller Williams continued its Manhattan hiring spree today, naming Declan Devlin the director of residential rentals, effective May 31. Devlin was most recently a senior vice president at Best Apartments, and said he had been looking to take a position elsewhere because his “upside was limited” at Best Apartments. While Keller Williams Chairman Ilan Bracha and CEO Adina Azarian have made their focus on exclusive listings known, they chose a director with little experience in that realm. “Exclusive listings are completely out of my range of experiences,” Devlin told The Real Deal, “I’m completely new to that form of the business.” But Devlin said he is very comfortable presenting in front of landlords, and as when it hired Azarian as the firm’s CEO, Keller Williams has demonstrated its preference for a certain character trait over a set of experiences. TRD [more]

From the May issue: Rental brokers who lost exclusive contracts with building owners after the market crash are now re-auditioning for those roles as the market picks up.

Still, some say the economic downturn has permanently altered landlords’ reliance on exclusive relationships.

Adina Azarian, founder of the rental brokerage Adina Equities, recalled the rude awakening she got just after Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008. In the blink of an eye, she lost several long-standing clients who said they wanted to start managing their vacancies in-house.

They ended the relationship because of “their concern about how the recession would affect their bottom line,” said Azarian (now the new CEO of Keller Williams New York City), who at the time was forced to scramble for new contracts to replace them. [more]

Adina Azarian

Ilan Bracha has nabbed a leader for the New York City division of Keller Williams he helped
launch last month: Adina Azarian. Azarian joins Keller Williams NYC from Adina Equities, a
boutique firm she founded in 2002 that specializes in Manhattan rentals.
Azarian is set to join Bracha in his Trump Tower office on Monday, after she spends the
remainder of this week in California familiarizing herself with Keller Williams’ culture in one of
its longstanding markets.
With the move, she gets the opportunity to raise her own profile and lead more agents on a larger platform, without watching the company she built vanish under a larger firm. [more]

From the March issue: In the past year, New York City renters have come to expect a bevy of incentives, like months of free rent, landlord-paid brokers’ fees, and even — in the case of boutique luxury rental 436 West 20th Street — a butler. Could these perks be disappearing? In recent weeks, brokers have reported that landlords are doing away with concessions, and even increasing rents. “As their vacancies begin to drop, landlords around Manhattan are beginning to test rent increases,” noted Daniel Baum, CEO of the Real Estate Group New York, in a January market report. “Some of the major players, and even a few small outfits, have begun to remove concessions and bump up prices … around $100 to $200 per unit.” [more]

From left: Zhann Jochinke, Klara Madlin, Adina Azarian, Jeff Krantz, Leonard Steinberg, and Lisa Lippman

The Real Deal asked some agents the greatest compliment and greatest insult they have received in connection with their job. Many agents said winning a client or deal was the source of both. Beyond that, agents have received compliments ranging from sentimental messages to a bobblehead doll made in a broker’s likeness, and insults including being called less than a used carpet salesperson. Click here to see some of the compliments and insults brokers have received. [more]