Peter Hauspurg, chairman and CEO of Eastern Consolidated and Daun Paris, president of Eastern Consolidated
From the June issue: Home may be where the heart is, but what if it’s also in the workplace? This month The Real Deal takes a look at couples who work in the real estate industry.
While such pairings aren’t the norm in the business, there are high-profile examples like “Jvanka” — that is, husband-and-wife Jared Kushner, principal of Kushner Companies, and Ivanka Trump, a vice president at the Trump Organization.
Trump has reportedly said that having a shared background in real estate has been a boon to her relationship with Kushner, as she’s keenly interested in his descriptions of work machinations that others might find dull — a sentiment echoed by everyone TRD spoke to with a partner in the industry.
Aside from having a common passion, what makes couples like Trump and Kushner tick?
Here’s what five of them had to say. [more]

From left: Aleksandra Scepanovic and Sandra Dowling

At a time when most rental brokers in Brooklyn were girding their loins and praying for a springtime uptick in activity, one firm says it ended 2009 with a big demand for rental units, albeit with lower than average rents. Ideal Properties, a two-year old Brooklyn-based residential sales and rental firm, described its rental performance as “stronger than strong” during the last two months of 2009, in a year-end report (see full report after the jump). Meanwhile, the borough’s rental developments have been on rocky ground, with high-profile buildings like the Brooklyner, a 51-story behemoth that boasts the title of tallest building in Brooklyn, slashing prices. At last count, the Brooklyner had slashed its rates by almost 29 percent. But Ideal, which covers approximately 14 different Brooklyn neighborhoods in the western portion of the borough, including Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Park Slope, beat its typical December monthly performance by 20 percent, according to Aleksandra Scepanovic, managing director at the firm. According to the report, 15.3 percent of the rental transactions for
the year occurred in the month of December alone. Scepanovic would not
indicate Ideal’s total number of rental deals for 2009, but put
December’s 15.3 percent figure at about six to 12 deals per agent. The
report is based on 7,100 rental listings in a proprietary database. The spike in activity was due to improved stability in the region, she said, a changing of the tides from 2008 and rent reductions. [more]