From top left: Nest Seekers CEO Eddie Shapiro, managing directors Melvin Caro and Alex Dietrich, and a rendering of the new Williamsburg office at 578 Driggs Avenue

Come next Wednesday, Nest Seekers International will have a brick-and-mortar Williamsburg presence with a new office at 578 Driggs Avenue.

It’s a duplex office in a storefront location at the corner of North 6th Street, said Eddie Shapiro, the company’s president and CEO. He wouldn’t disclose the terms of the lease, but said the space clocks in at just shy of 2,000 square feet.

Nest Seekers, which has five offices in New York City (one of which is under construction), four on the East End and one in Miami, was “getting pressure” from agents and customers to open an office there, Shapiro said, and he wanted to expand the reach of his firm. [more]

A view of Jed Garfield, of Leslie J. Garfield & Co.’s kitchen and upstairs living room, which is filled with Damien Hirst paintings and sketches

From the November issue: A New Yorker’s address is a marker of identity — especially if the New Yorker is a residential real estate broker. This month, The Real Deal peeked inside the homes of some of Manhattan’s top brokers to find out what’s behind their front doors.

The five brokers we visited, who were all in the top 20 on The Real Deal’s latest list of top Manhattan agents (published earlier this year, in the June issue), may specialize in different sectors of the market, but they have all used their industry knowledge to pounce on insider deals and access otherwise obscure properties.

So it’s perhaps no surprise that their own homes seem to match up with the homes that fuel their businesses. [more]

Carol Friedman, senior vice president at Nest Seekers, and 36 Gramercy Park EastAs the last of the 25 available units enter contract at Mann Realty’s condominium conversion of 36 Gramercy Park East, more units are being prepared to hit the market, according to Nest Seekers International, which is marketing the building.

Sales launched at the 51-unit former rental building, between 20th and 21st streets, in 2010, even as Mann continued to do interior renovation work on the circa 1908 building. Buyers paid about $2,200 to $2,400 per square foot for unrenovated two- and three-bedroom apartments facing Gramercy Park, and then commissioned custom renovations. The buyers of renovated one- and two-bedroom apartments that don’t face the park paid an average of $1,806 and $1,930 per foot, respectively, Carol Friedman, senior vice president of Nest Seekers and marketing agent at the building, said. – Adam Fusfeld [more]

Clockwise from top left: The View condominium, Modern Spaces CEO Eric Benaim, Scott Walsh, director of market research for TF Cornerstone and the view from Penthouse 9 at sunset

Brokers and potential buyers gathered last night at TF Cornerstone’s Long Island
City condominium the View to check out the staged penthouses, and, quite
frankly, the views.

The Real Deal arrived just in time to see the sun set over the Manhattan skyline
directly across the river from the condo. The sight was breathtaking, even for
Scott Walsh, TF Cornerstone’s director of market research, who sees it every
day from his ground-floor apartment in the building.


Walsh said he eschewed the penthouses — which have been on the market since 2009 and range from $1.485 million
for a 1,495-square-foot two-bedroom unit to $1.785 for a 1,763-square-foot
three-bedroom after recent price cuts — for his unit because of his private large outdoor
garden. Comments

Rendering of Nest Seekers’ new office at 100 Riverside Boulevard (see inset)

This fall, a one block stretch of Riverside Boulevard will suddenly become crowded
with real estate offices. First, Blu Realty Group plans a real estate office
and cafe on the boulevard, now Nest Seekers International is bringing an
office designed by Andres Escobar & Associates to Lincoln Square. The residential
brokerage said it commissioned the high-end designer to transform the raw
commercial condominium it bought at the base of the Avery into its newest office.
Escobar is known for designing the Duvet nightclub in Gramercy and the
92 Greene Street condo in Soho, among other high-profile projects.

Nest Seekers closed on the $1.4 million, approximately 1,500-square-foot space at
100 Riverside Boulevard last month and will open the office, its fourth in Manhattan,
in 30 to 60 days. The West Side office is the firm’s 10th overall; in addition to the
Manhattan locations it has one office in Long Island City, four on the East End, and one in Miami. [more]

Broker Regis Roumila

From the August issue: With the success of “Selling New York”on HGTV and Bravo’s forthcoming New York spinoff of “Million Dollar Listing,”there’s little doubt that New York real estate can generate solid ratings for television networks. Now, Nest Seekers International is betting that small-screen exposure can yield big sales, too.
The firm has struck a deal to broadcast its own internally produced 12-minute show on Cablevision’s Plum TV every Saturday, twice in the morning and once in the evening. Called “Blend” for its mix of real estate, lifestyle and celebrities, the show is hosted by Nest Seekers senior vice president Caroline Grane and filmed inside some of the firm’s priciest listings.
The first episode aired Memorial Day weekend. It featured a cooking segment, a roundtable discussion by artists and designers about Manhattan’s Sloane mansion, and a tour of the Watermill home of Todd Hase, a Soho-based furniture designer. The house is currently listed with Nest Seekers’ Joseph DeCristofaro for $3.295 million. [more]

Nest Seekers International added Hamptons-based brokerage Perspective Properties to its growing East End stable, the company announced today. Nest Seekers will absorb 11 agents, 20 exclusive properties — some listed for as much as $10 million — and Perspective’s 688 Montauk Highway office, rebranding it as Nest Seekers Water Mill. The acquisition comes on the heels of April’s purchase of Engel & Volkers Southampton office, and brings the firm’s count of Hamptons brokers to 40 and Hamptons offices to four. The firm also maintains three Manhattan offices, one Queens office and another in Miami and more than 150 agents in total. The firm also operates overseas through a set of international affiliates. “Their office location is superb, and they are a pleasure to work with,” said Eddie Shapiro, CEO of Nest Seekers International, in a statement. – Adam Fusfeld

In a move to expand its presence in the turbulent East End real estate market, Nest Seekers International has acquired the former Southampton-based real estate flagship of German brokerage Engel & Volkers, The Real Deal has learned.

Engel & Volkers, based in Hamburg, Germany, originally launched the Southampton franchise location in 2006 as its North American flagship and later expanded into Scarsdale as well as a number of other franchise offices in Florida, Boston and other parts of the country.

Jonathan Lerner, president of EV Scarsdale, which operated the Engel & Volkers franchise in New York, confirmed that company sold the physical assets to Nest Seekers and is in talks on a potential new franchise to operate under a different brokerage flag.

“We will be rebranding,” he said. [more]

From left: Nest Seeker’s CEO Eddie Shapiro and REBNY President Steven Spinola

In an unusual move, the Real Estate Board of New York sent a mass e-mail to more than 500 members notifying them that the trade group had fined the residential brokerage Nest Seekers International $5,000 for laying claim to another broker’s exclusive listing.

Several residential real estate insiders said it was the first time they had received a mass e-mail from REBNY notifying them publicly about a punishment. But at the same time, they said Nest Seekers was deserving of a sanction because it has often improperly put other firm’s exclusives on its own site.

REBNY, the city’s leading real estate trade organization, sent the notice of the fine yesterday afternoon to residential brokers. [more]

The View at 4630 Center Boulevard and unit 304 in the building

The View, TF Cornerstone’s Long Island City waterfront condominium, has passed the 50 percent sold mark. Since last summer, the condo has seen up to 11 closings per month. Nest Seekers International is the exclusive sales and marketing agent for the 184-unit condo, located at 4630 Center Boulevard. The 18-story condo features one-, two- and three-bedroom units up to 1,879 square feet, with prices starting at $616,000. Each unit offers floor-to-ceiling windows with views of the water, white oak flooring, Viking and Sub Zero appliances, washer-dryers and private balconies or terraces. TRD [more]