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]

Yankees pitcher Rafael Soriano rents four units in RiversEdge (the unit depicted is not his)

The Yankees most expensive off-season acquisition, right-handed pitcher Rafael Soriano, finally moved into his new digs last week at the RiversEdge building in Weehawken, N.J. Soriano signed leases for four rental units in the building, one for him, one for his assistant, one for his trainer and chef and another reserved for his sisters who travel from the Dominican Republic to games frequently, for a total of $15,000 a month according to the Keller Williams’ sales associate who brokered the lease, Gershon Adjaye.

Adjaye, who recently brought his Gersh Group under the Keller Williams umbrella, has brokered sales and rentals for several athletes before — he would only name former Nets’ guard Jeff McInnis, but never a Yankee. [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]

The Real Deal has had an action-packed schedule. We hit up the Charity: Water event at 123 East 10th Street, the largest and priciest home available in the East Village, hosted by Rubicon Property. We stopped by Core’s cocktail party on the 17th floor of 812 Fifth Avenue, which was recently redesigned by architect Joseph Dirand. We also dropped by the Griffin Court condominium in Hell’s Kitchen, where Gumley Haft Kleier was hosting a viewing party of this week’s HGTV’s realty reality show “Selling New York.” Meanwhile, back at the office we were letting our fingers do the walking and got some fun nuggets. Click here for more. [more]

From left: Dennis Mangone and Michael Bolla
By Sarabeth Sanders and Amy Tennery

Michael Bolla and Dennis Mangone — both larger-than-life types with rosters of high-profile clients to match — have joined the city’s largest residential brokerage, bringing in some celebrity cachet after the recent departure of a certain pair of Israelis.

Those are, of course, former managing directors Ilan Bracha and Tamir Shemesh, who until recently had sat at the helms of Prudential Douglas Elliman’s first- and fifth-ranked teams. Bracha left at the start of the year to launch the first Manhattan franchise of Keller Williams, while Shemesh followed a few weeks later to join the Corcoran Group. Shemesh told The Real Deal at the time that the similarly-timed departures were “purely coincidence.”

So too, it seems, are the new hires, as Elliman has apparently been after both Bolla, who had been running his own boutique brokerage operation for the past two decades, and Mangone, a top broker at Brown Harris Stevens, for years. [more]

From left: Ilan Bracha, Azure, Elliman agent Ammanda Espinal, Cassa Hotel & Residences

For the time being at least, the Azure condominium is staying with Prudential Douglas Elliman rather than following super-broker Ilan Bracha to his new company, Keller Williams New York City.

Bracha, formerly an Elliman agent, has been marketing the 34-story Yorkville tower with his team since March 2010, when he took over for Brown Harris Stevens. (Since the real estate downturn hit, many developers have tried switching brokerages to help boost sales at new condominiums.)

Then, in January, Bracha launched the first Manhattan franchise of Keller Williams, a firm with some 80,000 real estate agents throughout North America. He brought several of his Elliman team members with him. [more]

From left: David Tobon, Alon Chadad, Moshe Balalo, Andy Kim and Michael Arcos of the firm Blu

In the wake of two major brokerage launches — Citi Habitats founder Andrew Heiberger’s Town Residential and Prudential Douglas Elliman veteran Ilan Bracha’s Manhattan Keller Williams franchise — another company has joined the pack.

Five Nest Seekers alumni have launched a new residential real estate firm, Blu Realty Group. The new firm, launched today, was formed by Andy Kim, David Tobon and Michael Arcos — who left Nest Seekers this past Friday, according to a Blu spokesperson — and Alon Chadad and Moshe Balalo, who left Nest Seekers in July 2010 and have been with Bracha’s Bracha Group, which opened the Keller Williams franchise earlier this month, since that time. [more]

From left: Tamir Shemesh, Pamela Liebman, Howard Lorber and Dottie Herman

Another top team is leaving Prudential Douglas Elliman, the city’s largest residential brokerage.

Longtime Elliman broker Tamir Shemesh today announced that he is moving to the Corcoran Group — Elliman’s primary competitor — with his team of seven people. The move is the second high-profile departure for Elliman since the New Year. In January, super-broker Ilan Bracha — head of the top-ranked team at Elliman — left to launch the first Manhattan franchise of Keller Williams.

“I was ready for a change,” said Shemesh, who was a managing director at Elliman. “I found an opportunity at Corcoran, so we did it.” [more]

From left: Howard Lorber, Dottie Herman and Ilan Bracha

From the January issue:
[Updated 1:30 p.m. with comments from Prudential Douglas Elliman CEO Dottie Herman] For years, Texas-based real estate franchise company Keller Williams Realty has wanted to get into the lucrative Manhattan market. The question was how. Now, the fast-growing company is betting that it’s finally found the right partner for the job, in the form of Manhattan superbroker Ilan Bracha, a managing director at Prudential Douglas Elliman and head of the powerhouse Bracha Group, the top-ranked team at Elliman in terms of gross commission income. This month, Bracha is launching the first Manhattan franchise of Keller Williams. [more]

From the South Florida Web site: South Beach residential real estate prices are staying strong at the high end as buyers fork over cash to buy ultra-luxury condominium units. Upper-echelon properties, especially those in the South of Fifth neighborhood, are holding their own and, in some cases, fetching more than expected. “In South Beach, I would say prices are holding, prices are coming back,” de Solminihac said. “I saw a few transactions where the buyers expected to get lower prices, and the sellers got even higher prices than the first bids.” He cited one example at the Portofino tower, where the first offer for a $2.2 million unit came in at $1.5 million, and that was out-bid by a $1.55 million offer. Finally, a buyer came and offered $1.725 million and the deal closed in 15 days. [more]