At left: Gaia managing partners Amir Yerushalmi and Danny Friedman and Park River Properties’ Lenny Sporn and Mickey Roth at their new office opening. At right: Lenny Sporn with Rabbi Yishayahu Yosef Pinto at the office.

It’s been less than three months since Prudential Douglas Elliman powerbrokers Mickey Roth and Lenny Sporn departed the firm to start their own venture, but the Roth-Sporn brand appears to be holding strong, even under their new company name, Park River Properties.

The freshly-minted firm, which organizes foreign buyers into purchase groups for bulk deals in new development condominiums in New York City, is planning a slew of international outposts for its forthcoming expansion. In addition to the existing Park River office in Tel Aviv, Israel, a branch is coming to Rome next month, Sporn said. He is hoping to open a total of five new overseas offices over the course of the year, and is eyeing Japan and India for two of them.

Park River, which launched in December as part of one-year-old Gaia Real Estate, a distressed investment firm, also moved into a permanent U.S. headquarters this week with Gaia and Gaia’s latest acquisition, Vision Property Management, at the Carnegie Hall Tower at 152 West 57th Street. Park River currently employs 15 agents in New York and also has plans to open two more Manhattan branches over the next six months. [more]

From left: Jonathan Isaacs and Steve Ganz of Aligned Real Estate

At a time when a bevy of new business models have sprung up to capitalize on the real estate downturn, a residential brokerage launched by two former Core agents has revived the idea of discounted commissions. Steve Ganz, a former Core managing director, and Jonathan Isaacs, a former Core vice president, left the boutique brokerage in December 2009 to launch a new company, Aligned Real Estate. Based at 315 Fifth Avenue at 32nd Street, the new firm has a total of five agents, Isaacs said, though he expects the company to grow. Aligned has dispensed with the 6 percent commission model that real estate brokers historically receive for each sale, the founders said. Instead, they’ve devised a complex fee structure based on factors like the size of the apartment, how long it takes to sell, whether it sells above the asking price, and whether the customer chooses to pay the full commission at closing or in monthly installments. [more]

Mickey Roth

Prudential Douglas Elliman brokers Meir “Mickey” Roth and Lenny Sporn have left the brokerage giant to start a new firm.

Roth and Sporn, formerly partners in the Roth-Sporn Group, parted ways with Elliman two weeks ago and are in the process of launching Park River Properties, which will focus on organizing international buyers into purchase groups for new development condominium units.

The new company, temporarily headquartered at 117 East 57th Street, is slated to formally launch in January, Roth told The Real Deal by telephone today. The company currently has three employees in addition to Roth and Sporn, including two based in Israel, where they expect to recruit most of their buyers at first, he said.

“This is a unique concept and something we’re very excited about,” Roth said, adding that a couple members of Elliman’s Roth-Sporn group, which previously had four members, have joined the venture. [more]