When residential broker Jerry Minsky made Fort Greene his stomping ground two decades ago, he was well aware that he was confronting a bit of family history.
His parents, Nathan and Rose Minsky, both Holocaust survivors, were moved into the neighborhood’s housing projects in 1948 — and departed a year later.
“They were immigrants, like from ‘Sophie’s Choice,’ and they thought, ‘We’ve got to get out of here,'” said Minsky, an agent in the Fort Greene office of the Corcoran Group. “So, when I bought my house here in 1989, they were like, ‘Interesting choice of community.'”
Though he was born on the Lower East Side and grew up in the Brighton Beach area, Minsky didn’t let his parents’ uncertainty about his choice of neighborhoods derail his career in real estate.
After purchasing a 19th-century townhouse that was a former rectory for $350,000 (now worth almost six times that amount, he claims), Minsky went on to carve out a successful career as a broker and is today regarded as one of the major power players in Brooklyn residential real estate. Last year, Minsky and his assistant, Erin Brennan, moved more than $30 million worth of properties in the Fort Greene neighborhood.
“That means we had to do a lot of volume,” Minsky said. “This is not a neighborhood where one deal is $10 million. We had over 100 transactions.”
The pace of real estate deals in Fort Greene is not necessarily surprising given the high quality of properties in the historically middle-class African-American neighborhood, called the most preserved in Brooklyn. Statuesque five-story townhouses line many of its blocks; Fort Greene Park is undergoing a rejuvenation; and the neighborhood’s public transportation options could hardly be better.
But two decades ago, when Minsky bought into the neighborhood, Fort Greene, like some other parts of Brooklyn, was plagued with crime and drug problems. Still, Minsky saw an Old World charm to the community.
“I always had a real respect for history and a love of old architecture,” he said. “Maybe this neighborhood evoked some fantasy about my European background, since I grew up in Mitchell-Lama apartment dwellings in the 1960s.”
During his tenure as a teacher of disabled children in Williamsburg, Minsky attended a party held in 1984 at the Fort Greene apartment of a colleague — and it changed his life. At the same time, he was wooing his future wife, Aida, who is of Puerto Rican descent. The couple soon found an apartment in Fort Greene.
“I fell in love with a neighborhood,” Minsky said. “I left teaching, and I became a broker, and that was it. I’ve been a top producer ever since.”
At least one other broker in Fort Greene credits the former school teacher with having influenced her career trajectory. Juliana Brown, managing director of Corcoran’s Fort Greene office and Minsky’s boss, said he was the one who inspired her to go into real estate.
“Jerry was the reason I came into this industry,” Brown said. “I met him back in 1999 or so when I was looking for a place to buy. He was at that time the only agent who knew what he was talking about.”
Anthony Santangelo, who runs the Fort Greene office of Fillmore Real Estate, a firm specializing in Brooklyn, said Minsky is a highly professional competing agent.
“He’s a few doors from me, so I see him on the street practically every day,” Santangelo said. “I’ve been on several dealings with him, and it’s always a pleasure to deal with him.”
Santangelo points out that, even in this era of consolidation of real estate brokerages, Brooklyn still has its share of agents who have become pillars of a neighborhood by living and working in it. Minsky is one of these brokers.
It was a long climb to that pinnacle, Minsky said. He began as a rental agent in the 1980s and found it difficult to break into sales.
“Unfortunately, back in the day, working at the small firms in Brooklyn, the broker would compete with you, so they made me do the light stuff,” he said. “I was in the rental jailhouse.”
Even worse, right after purchasing his townhouse and launching his real estate career, the city was hit by the recession of the late 1980s. But it wasn’t all bad for Minsky. While he suffered as a property owner, being in rental brokerage turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
“All my sales colleagues were sitting there reading Stephen King novels at their desks because the phone wasn’t ringing,” Minsky said. “And here’s this crazy Polish-Jewish man going out of his way to kill himself to rent apartments — I even began managing buildings.”
Minsky took on management of rental buildings for several landlords. One was Mort Starobin, a mentor who’d serendipitously agreed to float Minsky the down payment to purchase his home. Another was the film director and producer Spike Lee.
It was a rough time to be in building management. “My wife and I would be in bed, and the phone would ring,” Minsky said. “Roommates would be getting into fights, throwing mattresses into the street, and breaking leases. It was, like, total nuts.
“And then the AIDS epidemic hit Brooklyn really hard,” he continued. “I remember on one or two occasions, in buildings that I’ve since sold several times, young people who, I’d have to call their parents and say, ‘I’m really sorry to have to tell you this…'”
Eventually in 1995, Minsky began doing sales throughout Brooklyn for a company called Brooklyn Landmark Realty, founded a decade earlier by broker Melinda Magnett.
“She gave me a chance,” he said. “She sold her interest and is no longer in the business, but she helped me to grow under her name as Brooklyn Landmark, and I was grateful.” Brooklyn Landmark Realty was absorbed by the Corcoran Group in 1998, and Magnett eventually became president of the Corcoran Group Brooklyn. Minsky made the transition to Corcoran, but said he regrets never having founded his own real estate company.
“My one personal criticism in terms of this flawless flow of 20 years of real estate is that I wish I’d opened up Jerry Minsky, Inc., or Jerry Minsky Properties,” he said. “If I’d been a little smarter and a little more capitalistic, I’d have sold my business to Barbara Corcoran.”
But the 44-year-old real estate agent said that the regret doesn’t weigh too heavily on him, especially when he considers his background. With a father who was a socialist who hobnobbed with the likes of writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, while working as an editor and reporter at The Forward, a bulwark of Jewish journalistic history in New York, Minsky said he’s had to come to terms with having a head for business.
While he doesn’t sugarcoat his love of earning money, Minsky said he also realizes there’s more to life.
“You know what? In one life, sometimes, we say in Yiddish, you don’t have to be a chazzer, or a pig,” Minsky said. “I’ve had my share of a ride that has been more than blessed.”
That includes raising two children, Ephraim, 7, and Ruby, 6, both of whom were born on Jewish holy days: Rosh Hashanah and Purim, respectively. Minsky said his financial success in the past two years has enabled him to travel to 20 countries while embarking upon an exploration of his personal history. A visit to Auschwitz led to the creation of a personal 28-minute documentary about his mother’s life.
Connecting with his heritage has enabled Minsky finally to move beyond it. And he has made a promise to himself to use the current year, which is likely to be a slower one for real estate brokers, to engage in philanthropy. He would like to contribute toward combating the genocide in Africa’s Darfur region in Sudan.
“I think a lot of the people in the business are going to be thrown for a loop this year,” Minsky said. “The little candy that we had last year may not be here this year. Sometimes these markets are a good time to reassess who we are, what we are, what we’ve learned, and what we’ve accomplished, so we can give something back.”