Bond New York has launched a Chinese-language section on its website in an effort to attract Asian investors and buyers, Crain’s reported. It is also embarking on a Web marketing campaign to identify the brokerage and the wider New York market to Chinese-speaking buyers overseas.
Bond is not the first brokerage to target foreign buyers. Marketing firm Prodigy Network allows visitors to switch its website to Spanish from English. The Corcoran Group’s site lets clients search for agents who speak a total of 29 foreign languages and Halstead, meanwhile, lists speakers of 19 languages. [more]

Bruno Ricciotti (l) and Noah Freedman, founders of Bond New York

From the May issue: This year, for the first time, scrappy upstarts ousted 138-year-old Brown Harris Stevens from its longtime berth among the city’s five largest firms. Since The Real Deal began its annual ranking of Manhattan residential firms in 2004, the same four sales firms — Prudential Douglas Elliman, the Corcoran Group, Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead Property — have dominated the top of the list. For years, these companies have reigned supreme as the largest firms in the city, with the most agents, the most listings and often the most exposure. [more]

From the June issue: Largely ignored during the boom because of
their relatively paltry budgets, first-time buyers have suddenly found
themselves among the most highly coveted client groups for New York
City’s real estate brokers. With few deals to latch onto, brokers have
started paying much closer attention to them and are now giving them
first-class status. In this month’s Q & A, brokers told The Real Deal that
first-time buyers now constitute anywhere from 30 to 70 percent of all
of their clients. That’s a jump from 15 to 50 percent from before the
credit crunch. While these first-time buyers require far more
handholding than those who are on their second or third apartment
purchases, they are pulling the trigger in greater numbers. But, as one
broker put it, they are still not “ready to get married” right away and
are more demanding clients because they want to see more apartments and
need tutorials on everything from property taxes to the financial
structure of a condo or co-op. [more]

From left: Bruno Ricciotti, Bond’s commercial listing at 33 Canal Street and Frank Gerage

Boutique residential brokerage Bond New York is diving into the commercial real estate game and, appropriately, taking on new office space. The firm is in the process of leasing an additional floor at its Union
Square office at 21 West 19th Street to accommodate a new 10-agent
commercial sales and leasing division, according to Bruno Ricciotti, a
principal at Bond. The nine-year-old firm plans to lease a third floor of the building,
where it already has 3,300 square feet of space on two levels, adding
another 2,500 square feet and 67 desks, Ricciotti said. Since it launched in January, the new division has garnered some $70
million in commercial sales exclusives and has sold two mixed-use
buildings, said Frank Gerage, Bond’s new managing director of
commercial properties. Bond hired Gerage away from Coldwell Banker Hunt
Kennedy, where he was the commercial director, this winter. [more]