Citi Habitats gets back into new development

Jodi Ann Stasse
Jodi Ann Stasse

One year after winding down its new development marketing efforts, rental brokerage giant Citi Habitats has relaunched the division under new leadership.

Jodi Ann Stasse, the founder and former president of Stasse & Co., a now-defunct national real estate sales and marketing firm, has been tapped to lead the division. Citi’s reconstituted new development marketing arm will offer market research, unit mix and site planning, design work, and on-site sales and leasing for developers of rental and condominium projects.

The division was previously led by Clifford Finn, who decamped to rival Douglas Elliman Development Marketing last year.

This time around, the division will work more closely with the new development marketing arm of its sister company, the Corcoran Group, said Citi Habitats president Gary Malin. He noted that the division’s relationship with Corcoran Sunshine, which also falls under Corcoran’s umbrella, would provide it with enhanced resources. Corcoran Sunshine and Citi Habitats New Developments will remain two separate brands, he said, but will feed into the same organization with the same back end and some of the same staff.

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“One and one doesn’t make two here; it makes four,” Malin said.

Citi’s new division already has more than 2,000 units in its pipeline, Stasse said, including four luxury rental developments in Midtown East, Harlem and Brooklyn. There’s also Packard Square, a three-tower project on Queens Plaza in Long Island City, and JDS Development’s 800-unit rental at 626 First Avenue in Manhattan.

More than 80 percent of the company’s business is rental product, Stasse said, but Citi hopes to market some condo projects too. Will that mean stepping on Corcoran’s toes? No, said Malin. “Up to $2,000 a foot under the Citi brand makes sense,” he said. “Entry-level condos are a natural evolution of our tenant base.