Isaac Krispin

From the June issue:  In a bid to expand and attract new talent, the residential sales and rental brokerage Urban Sanctuary is switching to a 100 percent commission model, according to firm president Isaac Krispin. As of June 5, Krispin said, agents will no longer pay a percentage of each commission to the firm. Instead, they will pay a flat monthly fee of $99, as well as a transaction fee on each deal. The company, which currently has around 30 agents, aims to grow to several hundred in the next three years, he said. Krispin, who founded Urban Sanctuary in 2004, said he hopes the move will differentiate his firm from other brokerages.

“Agents are hopping from one company to another in search of a larger split,” he said. “If you have a 100 percent split … no one can compete with that.” [more]

From left: Galleria’s Mickey Roth, Urban Sanctuary’s Isaac Krispin and 160 Pearl StreetIt may be less than a year old, but Mickey Roth’s residential sales brokerage the Galleria Group is merging with Urban Sanctuary, The Real Deal has learned, to create a larger and more competitive firm, both company heads said.
The merger is a recent idea, said Isaac Krispin, president of Urban Sanctuary, and follows from the two firms working together on some recent resales in Midtown. No money will change hands in the deal, Krispin said, which is slated to be finalized in the next month or so.
Galleria, founded in 2010 by Roth, hot off the heels of his departure from Prudential Douglas Elliman and a short stint at Park River Properties, which he co-founded, now has seven agents and works out of a “small” seven-person office at 115 East 57th Street, Roth said. Urban Sanctuary has around 30 agents and two offices — at 160 Pearl Street and 37 East 28th Street. All of the current agents at both firms will be retained in the merger and Krispin expects to hire around 10 to 20 new agents.… [more]

Elie Pariente said he has seen a number of AIG execs relocating to 15 Broad Street

Brokers who work in the Financial District say they are seeing an increase in the number of financial services executives posted abroad who are relocating back to New York, and specifically to newer developments in the Financial District. Elie Pariente, managing partner at Urban Sanctuary, said he has done four deals in the past 45 days with AIG executives returning to the U.S. from Tokyo and Singapore, to work for Chartis Insurance, an AIG spin-off. Three of the apartments that Pariente, who said he has a history of deals with AIG employees, sold were in 15 Broad Street. All four were two-bedroom apartments, which Pariente called “standard” for financial services executives. The apartments ranged in size from 1,200 to 1,600 square feet and in price from $1.1 million to $1.5 million…. [more]

A few months after switching marketing firms from now-defunct JC DeNiro & Associates to Brown Harris Stevens, District’s developers have made another change, this time to Urban Marketing, a new division of brokerage Urban Sanctuary. Switching sales and marketing firms has become a common response from developers to slowing sales amid the recession. District, a 163-unit condominium at 111 Fulton Street, is currently over 70 percent sold out, said Stephen McArdle, a partner at Urban Marketing…. [more]