From the August issue: Many of the new firms now bursting onto the real estate scene promise the latest, greatest commission splits. But Edward Longley, a former City Connections Realty broker who launched the Hollingsworth Group last month, has a different approach.

“It’s not about the payout,” Longley told The Real Deal.

That may sound surprising coming from a five-year veteran of David Schlamm’s City Connections, one of the first real estate brokerages in the city to adopt a “100 percent commission” model.

But Longley, who named the new firm for his grandmother, said he has a longer-term approach. He envisions a boutique brokerage that operates more like a Fortune 500 company, with a clear corporate structure, salaries and profit sharing. He believes that when all is said and done, those strategies will generate even more income for agents than the high-commission-split models now popular in Manhattan. [more]

  
From left: 1600 Broadway, Cipriani Club Residences and 555 West 23rd Street

From the March issue:One in every 13 homes is in pre-foreclosure. Half are listed for rent or sale. This predicament isn’t taking place in the outer boroughs. It’s happening in Manhattan at a luxury condo. The building is one of dozens in Manhattan where multiple owners have fallen behind on their mortgages. This month, The Real Deal put together a top 10 list of buildings in Manhattan with the most units that received a pre-foreclosure filing in the last year. [more]

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From the November issue: Real estate brokers are often stereotyped as shysters and
double-dealers. But in today’s rocky market, buyers are sometimes the
ones being deceptive.
Edward Longley, an associate broker at City Connections Realty, was
shocked to discover recently that his clients were planning to buy the
88 Greenwich Street condo he had shown them — but without paying
Longley a commission. And real estate agent Carleen McManus arranged
for her client to see a unit at Jersey City’s 77 Hudson before she went
on vacation, only to return and find the client negotiating to buy a
unit there. More and more agents say buyers they have worked with — often for
months at a time — are cutting them out of the deal when it’s time to
pay the commission.

From left: K. Thomas Elghanayan and brother Frederick started TF Cornerstone

Now that the division of Rockrose has been finalized, the two younger Elghanayan brothers are looking to snap up distressed assets. “Our plan is to look for properties that are in some form of incomplete state,” K. Thomas Elghanayan, who with his brother Frederick is now doing business under the name TF Cornerstone, told The Real Deal.
“We can take something that’s half-built and we can finish it, manage
it, rent it out, sell it, and do whatever we need to do. We’re looking
at a couple of opportunities like that, where we’d be buying these
[properties] from financial institutions.” In fact, he said, TF (for Thomas and Frederick) Cornerstone is close to making a deal on two properties in the New York metro area: one is a “broken condo,” and another is a development deal where construction started and stopped. [more]