There were deals, and there were parties.
When Oren Alexander sold a penthouse at the Park Imperial in 2009 to South Florida attorney Jim Ferraro, whom he’d met skiing in Aspen, he threw a party on the day of the closing. It was his first sale and he was hoping to keep the momentum going, he told The Real Deal in 2019.
Oren and his twin brother Alon’s 27th birthday bash at Beautique, a since-closed Manhattan lounge where the rich used to gather, was immortalized in a two-minute video showing guests like Howard Lorber and developer Zach Vella. And for their brother Tal’s 30th, in 2016, the trio spent a celebratory weekend in the Hamptons.
The jet-setting Alexanders — Oren and Tal — built their brokerage business at Douglas Elliman before founding their own shop, Official, backed by white-label company Side. Oren’s goal was to stand out among his peers by living the lifestyle of his clients.
And so while they built, they also partied, hitting up high society staples like Art Basel and establishing themselves as hosts on the circuit.
It seemed to work for their business, too: In 2019, the Alexanders had the $238 million deal at 220 Central Park South for what became the most expensive home ever sold in the United States.
But the partying had a dark side, it has now been alleged.
Rebecca Mandel says she met Oren and Alon at a now-shuttered venue called SL in the Meatpacking District in 2009, when she was 18.
The following year, Mandel says in a lawsuit, she ran into the brothers at the same nightclub, where Alon allegedly drugged her drink. She claims the two persuaded her to return with them to their apartment, where they took turns pinning her down and raping her, according to the complaint.
Kate Whiteman alleges that Oren and Alon raped and assaulted her two years later. According to a lawsuit she filed in March, Alon grabbed her as she was leaving Dune, a nightclub in the Hamptons, in May 2012 and brought her to Sir Ivan’s Castle, a medieval-style estate known at the time for its parties.
In the complaint, Whiteman alleges that the twins forced her to change into a sarong and that when she tried to run away, a security guard “dragged her back into the garage.” She claims the brothers then brought her to a large bedroom, where they allegedly raped, assaulted and battered her.
Three months after the alleged assault, Oren closed a record-breaking deal in Miami when he sold an Indian Creek estate his father and Felix Cohen had co-developed for $47 million.
For the new stars in residential real estate, the deals and parties continued.
“Worst-kept secret”
The Alexanders started 2024 on a high.
The agents had just closed the first full year of business at Official, ranking seventh in TRD’s list of top Manhattan brokerages, with $260 million in sales across 33 deals.
The brothers were picked to lead sales at hotly anticipated Miami developments including Michael Stern’s Dolce & Gabbana condo tower and Michael Shvo’s Rosewood-branded condos at the Raleigh in Miami Beach.
The brokerage opened in Los Angeles, Orange County and the Bahamas. In March, it announced an outpost in Aspen.
But as Official and the Alexanders were busy publicizing this latest expansion, Mandel and Whiteman filed their lawsuits in New York.
The complaints sat in the courts for months, until TRD reported on them in June. The story expanded. The women’s attorney told TRD that he and his partners had heard from more than two dozen alleged victims. More allegations followed.
Within days, Oren stepped down from Official, and its other founders announced they were buying out his ownership in the company.
Then came a third lawsuit, this one alleging that Tal also raped a woman with Alon, in an assault arranged by Oren.
A week later, Tal too said he was taking a pause from the firm, leaving the boutique brokerage without its star co-founders two years after Official’s inception.
Tal and Oren have denied the allegations, but the fallout from the scandal could extend beyond Official and the Alexanders and into the residential brokerage industry they shaped and were shaped by.
One industry expert called their alleged conduct the “worst-kept secret in New York and Florida real estate circles.”
Even with new partners, insiders say Official will likely fold, with its top agents going to other firms.
The Alexanders’ rise
For the Alexander brothers, work and home life intertwined. As a teenager, Oren spent weekends at their dad’s construction sites, sparking his interest in development. He got his real estate license in Florida at the age of 18.
“Some parents don’t talk business at the table,” Oren said in a YouTube interview two years ago. “Shabbat dinners were board meetings.”
Oren and Tal pursued real estate, while Alon began working for his mother’s and uncle’s private security business, Kent Security.
After graduating from college a year early, Oren moved to New York City in the fall of 2008, the depths of the Great Recession. He had dreams of working for a developer, but the economy left him with few options for a paying corporate job, according to the 2022 interview with the website From the Founder.
At last, a connection introduced Oren to Lorber, chair of what was then called Prudential Douglas Elliman. He got his real estate license in New York.
“Howard gave me that chance, and I’m thankful for that,” Oren told TRD in 2019.
Oren and Tal shared a room sublet from a friend while Tal attended Hofstra University on Long Island. Oren had just turned 21. Tal, 22, started a rental business, while Oren, under the Elliman brand, searched for his own rental clients by placing ads on Craigslist.
“Everything we sell, we live. We’re not there because a client invited us. We’re there on our own.”
“All I knew was that market, and I had to figure it out,” Oren told From the Founder, referring to the residential market during the recession. “And I did quickly.”
Soon after, Oren met Ferraro, who would later become Oren and Alon’s attorney in the initial two lawsuits filed against them. They sold him the Park Imperial unit and celebrated.
“I did everything to stay relevant,” Oren said. “I didn’t want to be a shooting star.”
Though Tal was focused on rentals, the brothers’ businesses eventually overlapped when one of Tal’s rental clients expressed interest in selling a seven-room co-op in the El Dorado at 300 Central Park West.
“I told them they had to meet my brother,” Tal told the Miami Herald in 2019.
The Central Park West apartment was Oren’s first listing when it hit the market for $7.5 million in 2011 and the first deal the brothers worked on together. The following year, Tal joined Elliman, and the duo joined forces to launch the Alexander Team.
“That’s something that was instilled in us throughout our whole childhood, of how much stronger we are together,” Oren said in the From the Founder interview. “That’s something I share with not just Tal, but all my brothers.”
Oren’s Indian Creek estate deal, closed not long after the alleged Whiteman assault, gave him a foothold in South Florida. Soon he was working on his first major development, a 47-unit condo in Miami Beach from Alan Faena, financed by Len Blavatnik. The Faena House attracted the who’s who of finance, including billionaire hedge fund managers Ken Griffin and Jamie Dinan and former Goldman Sachs Chair and CEO Lloyd Blankfein.
Working out of the sales office, Oren used the project to leverage more publicity.
As Oren and Tal built up their contacts and social media following, they allegedly continued to assault women.
About a month after news of the Indian Creek deal broke, Angelica Parker claims she was raped by Tal and Alon while Oren watched, according to her lawsuit filed in June. She alleges that years after the attack, Tal “barged in” on her while the two were staying at the same house and tried to assault her again. In her complaint, Parker claims Tal started calling her the “king’s rat” after she had him thrown out of the house that night.
The brothers have fought online rumors of their behavior for a decade.
In 2013, Oren and Alon sued the anonymous publisher of a blog and other message board posts for defamation after the publisher accused the brothers of rape. The lawsuit, filed in Florida, denied that the two had ever raped anyone. The judge later issued a temporary injunction, ordering the publisher to remove the posts. The blog has also been taken down.
On Reddit, users have noted that posts about the Alexanders get removed. Even on Wikipedia, references to the lawsuits about the rape allegations were wiped clean.
Meanwhile, Tal and Oren continued to rise in the ranks at Elliman. By 2018, the Alexander Team had landed among the 20 top-producing agents and teams in the city, according to TRD’s ranking that year.
Their social life in Manhattan, the Hamptons, South Florida and Aspen kept up with the deals.
Every year, Oren and Tal hosted clients at a dinner and cocktail party during Miami’s Art Basel. The brothers took photographs riding camels in Doha, Qatar, and went to events like Burning Man, the Biennale in Venice and Frieze in London. They traveled to Las Vegas for the Mayweather-McGregor fight with JDS Development’s Stern.
Their living situations also improved from that sublet apartment: Tal rented a unit at 432 Park, while Oren and Tal built waterfront homes in Miami Beach.
“Everything we sell, we live,” Oren said in the interview on YouTube. “We’re not there because a client invited us. We’re there on our own.”
As the brothers pursued the high life, more women claim they became victims of their attacks. An aspiring model alleges that in the fall of 2017 she was raped by Oren, according to the Wall Street Journal, which reported on claims of sexual assaults dating back to high school and as recently as 2020.
Rumors about their behavior didn’t stop Tal and Oren from making waves in the industry. In 2019, the two represented Griffin in the record-setting deal for the quadplex at 220 Central Park South.
Official, Alexanderless
In the summer of 2022, after two years of planning, Tal and Oren left Elliman to start Official with Nicole Oge, Richard Jordan and Andrew Wachtfogel, who were tasked with overseeing the day-to-day operations. Side, Guy Gal’s firm, provided back-end support as Official opened in New York and Miami.
The year after their departure from Elliman was a big one, professionally and personally. The brothers sold the waterfront Miami Beach home they shared, and Tal and Oren got married in May and October ceremonies. Oren’s wedding, to model Kamila Hansen, made it into Vogue.
By February 2024, Official had a headcount of more than 60 brokers.
But the hot streak hit a snag after the June report on the allegations.
Developers began to distance themselves from Official. Stern is working to replace Official at his planned Dolce & Gabbana-branded development in Miami’s Brickell neighborhood. Shvo plans to bring sales in-house, led by Anna Sherrill, who recently joined Official but will be working with Shvo directly.
A third developer, Jonathan Landau, who tapped Official to lead sales of a boutique project in Bay Harbor Islands, declined to comment.
The brokerage’s remaining partners have been left to deal with the aftermath, which could amount to an existential crisis for Official.
Before the allegations against Tal came out, founding partner Oge told the New York Times that “Official is not Oren Alexander.” She quickly tried to sanitize the company’s image, later revealing in a company email that she and her partners were severing ties with Oren and removing him as an owner.
“The conflation or misconception about Official somehow being inextricably linked to any individual, whether it’s me or Oren or anyone else, is just false,” she told the Times.
It’s clear that Official would not be where it is now — before or after the allegations — without the Alexanders.
Official has only released a few sparse statements. Gal, the CEO of Side; Donnie Pingaro, Side’s managing broker in Florida; and Oge and her partners have not responded to repeated requests for comment. Neither have a handful of top Official agents.
After Tal announced he would be stepping away from Official, a company spokesperson said it would be “announcing details about how the company will be reconfigured and fortified for the future.” The spokesperson declined to elaborate, but Official is expected to announce new partners, despite some predictions that this is the end.
“Official Partners is the Alexander brothers and will likely cease to exist without the Alexander brothers,” wrote Jonathan Miller, a housing expert and appraiser who has long authored reports for Douglas Elliman. “And the Alexander brothers will likely cease to exist as brokers after this scandal.”