From left: 425 Park Avenue, Ilan Bracha, chairman at Keller Williams NYC (note: correction appended) and Jeffrey Rosenblatt, senior managing director at Newmark Knight Frank

[Updated at 3:12 p.m. with comment from Newmark Knight Frank] More details have emerged regarding Keller Williams NYC’s new 25,000-square-foot space down the street from its existing offices.

The residential brokerage got a “great deal” on their sublease at 425 Park Avenue last month, according to Jeffrey Rosenblatt, senior managing director at Newmark Knight Frank, who represented both Keller Williams and the sublandlord, Lebhar Friedman, in the transaction. The firm also has an option to take another 10,000 square feet in the space in the event of further expansion, a spokesperson for Keller Williams said. [more]

Nancy Sale Johnson Rashad and husband Ahmad Rashad

Socialite Nancy Sale Johnson Rashad, the ex-wife of Jets owner Woody Johnson and mother of the late socialite heiress Casey Johnson, has relisted her apartment at 817 Fifth Avenue with Ilan Bracha of Keller Williams NYC for $23 million, according to data from Streeteasy.com.

The five-bedroom apartment, which was previously listed with the Corcoran Group’s Leighton Candler in 2010 for $21 million, has five bedrooms, five-bathrooms, two wood-burning fireplaces and a lower-floor vault. It is configured as a triplex maisonette with nearly 7,000 square feet of living space on three levels. [more]

While the folks behind Streeteasy.com may be most closely associated with real estate listings and data points, they shrugged off the computer geek image last night for a holiday party at the Mondrian Soho hotel’s Mister H bar.

Sofia Song, vice president at Streeteasy, said more than 200 of the invited brokers, advertisers, clients and media guests planned to attend the event, at 9 Crosby Street between Howard and Grand streets, and the press of bodies last night seemed to bear out her tally.

Between the ruby-colored wingbacks, gilt-framed mirrors, Persian rugs and bird cages strung from the ceiling, the space evoked a cross between a boudoir and a colonial drawing room. Or, as Iman Bacodari, vice president and associate broker for the Jacky Teplitzky team at Prudential Douglas Elliman, put it, “Chinatown dumpling shop meets Spanish brothel … with a little English manor sprinkled in.” Comments

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]

From left: Ilan Bracha, Haim Binstock and 16-18 West 57th Street

Gary Barnett’s Extell Development paid $80 million for a five-story commercial building that residential broker Ilan Bracha and development partner Haim Binstock bought in 2007 for $60 million.

Bracha, the chairman of the New York City office of residential firm Keller Williams, and Binstock, purchased 16-18 West 57th Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues, in 2007 through their B&B Investment Group, with hopes to build a 28-story mixed-use tower.

Instead, their original lender Petra Capital Management sold the loan to a company affiliated with Barnett earlier this year, The Real Deal reported. [more]

Keller Williams’ Ilan Bracha and 555 Madison Avenue

Keller Williams NYC, the New York branch of national brokerage Keller Williams Realty, has leased 22,000 square feet of office space at 555 Madison Avenue formerly occupied by Tiffany & Co., Crain’s reported.

The new office can accommodate 300 brokers, almost three times the number Keller Williams NYC currently employs. The company, which launched in April, has 112 agents. Brokers will move into the office starting Oct. 1, company Chairman Ilan Bracha told Crain’s. Executives will remain at the brokerage’s headquarters in Trump Tower at 725 Fifth Avenue between 56th and 57th streets.

“The space is gorgeously done and has good energy,” Bracha said of the new digs, which are between 55th and 56th streets. “It’s also in a prime location.” [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]

From left: Ilan Bracha, Rabbi Yishayahu Yosef Pinto and 240 Riverside Boulevard (building photo credit: CityRealty)

A three-year old plan to convert a 2,700-square-foot retail space into a synagogue at the Heritage at Trump Place may have collapsed, but the parties involved are trying to save it. In May, Bank of America initiated $1.2 million in foreclosure proceedings against a rabbi-to-the-real-estate-stars, a top-selling residential broker and a developer involved in the synagogue plans. According to the complaint, filed May 23, Rabbi Yishayahu Yosef Pinto, Ilan Bracha, who runs the Manhattan office for Keller Williams Realty, and his partner in development deals at B+B Investment Group, Haim Binstock, defaulted on their loan for a portion of Heritage at Trump Place at 240 Riverside Boulevard at 70th Street.

“As of May 16, 2011, the principal balance due and owing under the terms of the note was $1,207,694.24,” the filing says. Payments due to BofA have not been made since January, according to the filing. All three men are cited as part of the LLC — Pinto Bracha & Binstock LLC — that is named on the lien, according to city records. But attorneys for Pinto, Bracha and Binstock from the firm Mitofsky Shapiro Neville & Hazen fired back late last month. [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]

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]