As if the average Manhattan broker didn’t have enough competition.
Paolo Zampolli, founder of ID Model Management and jet-setting director of international development for Donald Trump, is now recruiting fashion models and other aesthetically-endowed women to be real estate brokers at Paramount Realty Group.
Zampolli told The Real Deal he has already trained several women in the wiles of real estate on behalf of boutique firm Paramount, which recently appointed him to its board after approaching him with the model idea. Two have their licenses and are out brokering sales in the higher ends of the white-hot market, and another five as of late July were in training toward their licenses. Only one so far has been a model represented by ID Models, Zampolli said, which has an office in Soho. (Zampolli’s day job in Trump’s empire, which he landed last year, is not affiliated with his model efforts at Paramount.)
“We’re looking for smart ladies that have the potential to make real money in real estate,” said Zampolli, a native of Milan, Italy. “For a beautiful building, why not a beautiful broker?”
Zampolli said he hasn’t decided how many models he wants to turn into brokers, and the recruits from the modeling world seem to be trickling toward Paramount in ones and twos right now. Still, Zampolli said he sips his real estate inspiration from The Donald and from another friend, Howard Lorber, chairman and co-owner of Prudential Douglas Elliman.
That organization, Zampolli pointed out, has thousands of brokers in New York. And that may mean an army of model-brokers in the city’s future.