From the June issue: In past years, many New Yorkers depended on the searchable classified ad service Craigslist.org to help them find affordable apartments, often without brokers’ fees. But these days, many are trading hours of scrolling through apartments on Craigslist for posting housing queries in the form of status updates on Facebook or Twitter.
For the consumer, social media is a way of avoiding the possibility that what’s advertised on Craigslist may not really be what’s available. For the broker, it’s a new opportunity for marketing.
[more]

Manhattan-based real estate brokerage BP Vance will no longer rent and sell apartments to and for individuals, founder and attorney Adam Leitman Bailey told The Real Deal today. The company will exclusively focus on brokering deals for its existing corporate client base, starting next month.

This change in focus is about playing to the company’s big income clients and comes as a result of the demand for experts to navigate pre-foreclosures and other distressed property opportunities, according to Bailey, who started the company in 1997, naming it after his grandparents Bob and Paula Vance. “It’s a matter of math,” Bailey said. “If you’re making a lot of money one way, you may as well stick to that formula.” [more]

From the May issue: The first-quarter market reports released last month by the city’s major residential firms yielded few shockers. With sales volume largely unchanged from last year, industry experts agreed that the market is generally stable.

But the data did bring one unexpected twist: an unusual spike in the number of co-ops sold.

The first quarter saw “an unusually high” number of co-op transactions versus condos, said Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel and the preparer of Prudential Douglas Elliman’s market report.

“Co-ops are seeing a burst of activity, and condos are seeing a sharp drop,” Miller said.

Elliman’s report found 1,430 closed sales of co-ops in the first quarter, surging 28.7 percent from 1,111 in the same period of last year. Condo sales, meanwhile, dropped 24.3 percent to 964 from 1,273 in the prior-year quarter. [more]

From left: Steven Spinola of REBNY, Douglas Wagner of Bond New York

The
Real Estate Board of New York has requested bids on a new technology
provider to replace its existing ROLEX data platform with a new system
that will allow agents to share t [more]

James Ferrari, the founder of Benjamin James Real Estate, said he is reinvigorating the ailing company with an injection of capital and a radically altered business plan he claims would give three-quarters of the company’s profits to charity.
A former male model, Ferrari left the 16-year-old company in the hands of top executive Douglas Wagner for the past few years while he focused on other pursuits, like philanthropy, music and his media company, Ferrari Media Production. “I couldn’t have told you two years ago who worked at my company because I was on the West Coast or South Africa,” Ferrari said. With the financial crisis, however, the business struggled, closing two of its three offices within a year, and Wagner recently announced plans to leave, as The Real Deal first reported. Ferrari considered closing the company, he told The Real Deal, but instead has decided to step back in to manage its day-to-day operations. He said he is planning to put a significant amount of capital into the business — “whatever it takes” to get it up and running. He is also planning to reopen the company’s Soho office, which closed over a year ago, and has begun making overdue payments to creditors, (including The Real Deal). “The future of the company is much more stable than it was six months ago,” Ferrari told The Real Deal by phone from the company’s current headquarters at 120 West 21st Street. But there’s one major difference. This time around, Ferrari said, he is committed to transforming the company into a socially conscious venture that will give some 75 percent of its profits — after agents and bills have been paid — to charitable organizations Ferrari supports, such as the AIDS research group amfAR, the non-profit organization Color Me In!, and Housing Works. [more]

Douglas Wagner, president and general manager at Benjamin James Real Estate, has left the shrinking company for a position at brokerage Bond New York. Wagner became executive managing director of sales at Bond just over a week ago, according to Bruno Ricciotti, a principal at Bond, and will manage sales and rentals at the company’s 45-agent Upper East Side office at 1500 Second Avenue between 78th and 79th streets. Ricciotti said Bond and Benjamin James have often worked on rental deals together. Wagner’s departure raises questions about the future of Benjamin James,
which has lost market share during the recession. James Benjamin Ferrari founded the
firm in 1993, but in recent years left the company almost entirely in
Wagner’s hands.
Ferrari was not available for comment by press time.
[more]

Benjamin James is down to one office at 120 West 21st Street

Taking a cue from other real estate companies, Benjamin James Real
Estate has cut staff and closed offices amid a still-ailing real estate
market. The company is down to one office, located at 120 West 21st Street,
down from three a year ago, according to Douglas Wagner, the company’s
president and general manager. The company closed its Soho office, at 96 West Houston Street at
LaGuardia Place, around a year ago, Wagner said, then closed its Union
Square branch, at 900 Broadway, May 1. Fitting into one 1,000-square-foot office required the company to
reduce its workforce by about 14 people during a “very unpleasant
Friday afternoon” in April, Wagner said. [more]