Bracha’s CEO pick: His former mentor

Adina AzarianIlan Bracha and Adina Azarian first met 14 years ago, when they were both 20-somethings working for the now-defunct residential real estate brokerage Dwelling Quest.

Azarian, now 37, was the mentor assigned to train Bracha through his first rental transaction.

“She was my leader back then,” said Bracha, “so I’m well aware of her skills.”

While Bracha went on to become one of the city’s top sales brokers, Azarian steadily parlayed exclusive relationships she built with various Manhattan landlords into a company of her own. Now, her four-agent firm — known for its signature pink website — handles the leasing of 1,500 rental apartments in some 70 small buildings in prime neighborhoods, like 70 Barrow Street, 105 Christopher Street and 211 East 5th Street.

And, as The Real Deal reported exclusively on the web late last month, Bracha has tapped his former mentor to head the New York City division of Keller Williams he launched in February.

Azarian — who is stepping down from the leadership of Adina Equities to become CEO of Keller Williams NYC — said she’s in the process of finding a new president for her firm, who will continue to grow her brand. While Adina Equities will continue to be a separate company, it will now be affiliated with Keller Williams, a Texas-based real estate franchise company with some 80,000 agents in North America in around 700 offices. From now on, Adina Equities’ listings will link to Keller Williams’, and the firm’s four agents will cede some of their commissions to Keller Williams.

Azarian said the fact that her company will continue to exist on its own was one reason she was attracted by Bracha’s offer. Over the years, she’s been “approached by every real estate firm you can name,” she said, but always declined their offers because she didn’t want to watch the company she built vanish into a larger firm.

With Keller Williams, she said, she gets the opportunity to raise her own profile as CEO and lead more agents on a larger platform, but her firm will not disappear.

“Most other companies want you to morph into what they do,” Azarian said. “But the Keller Williams model is completely different; you keep your identity, you keep the brand you build, and you just use the tools and the business model they have to grow your business under their umbrella.”

Azarian said Keller Williams’ unique profit-sharing model was also attractive to her.

Keller Williams brokers pay the firm 30 percent of their commission up to $50,000, then keep all of their earnings beyond that. Brokers can also sponsor new agents joining the company, and earn a cut of the revenue they generate for Keller Williams. Agents are entitled to their piece of the profit share even if they leave the firm, provided they become vested with Keller Williams by sticking around for three years. The company paid $32 million to brokers nationwide in profit-sharing money last year, Azarian said. “It’s like mailbox money,” she said, “and that’s something that was very attractive to my team.”

Since moving from Prudential Douglas Elliman to Keller Williams, Bracha said that he has grown the new firm from 20 to 48 agents. He previously told The Real Deal that his goal is to reach 250 brokers within the first year.

Some in the industry question whether Azarian’s rental-focused background has adequately prepared her for the role of CEO, but Bracha said she is the perfect candidate to head his fast-growing firm. The 350 transactions her team completed last year show she has the ability to successfully lead a team of agents, he said.

“She has the entrepreneurial spirit we want,” Bracha said. “What she’s done [in the rental market] is not as important as how well she can inspire other agents to work harder and get better.”

According to Antonio del Rosario, CEO of the ADR New York group at Rutenberg Realty, recruiting Azarian was a smart move by Bracha, who has said he wants to continue brokering deals.

“Ilan Bracha is going to be distracted by his own deals,” del Rosario said. “Adina won’t be. She’s going to be focusing on the success of every agent, and that’s essential to the viability of Keller Williams in this market.”