The new president of William B. May & Company wants to settle any confusion about his firm’s recent turbulent patch, addressing any misperceptions both among the public and the brokerage community. Then he wants to expand. Eric Lustgarten moved in January from nearly eight years at Brown Harris Stevens to head William B. May, a residential firm with a pedigree stretching back to at least the 1860s.
Except that, lately, the pedigree has zigzagged.
At least two firms, through a maze of legal maneuvers and May family disputes, have staked a claim to the William B. May name in the last couple of years, with the dust only settling at the tail end of 2005, when one of those firms reemerged as Century 21 Kevin B. Brown & Associates and the other as William B. May, the company Lustgarten now runs.
Confused? It’s understandable: The top two hits of a Google search in late February for “William B. May” were Lustgarten’s firm and Century 21 Kevin B. Brown, which on its Web site touts its existence “since 1866” — the year William B. May started.
Lustgarten told The Real Deal that his first priority as president was to slice through this confusion. A re-branding campaign will roll out over the next couple of months, unfolding in tandem with an expansion to three Manhattan offices from two currently, including a new 5,000-squarefoot flagship office at 64th Street and Lexington Avenue with more than 80 feet of street-facing windows. The flagship should open by the spring, Lustgarten said. An office in Greenwich, Conn., may soon follow, he added.
“There’s a lot of confusion out there, and we intend on rectifying that confusion,” said Lustgarten, 43, who was approached by the May family — whom he called “the original May family” — in the fall of 2005. “A lot of brokers don’t even really know what has occurred. There will be an entire re-do of everything from our Web site to our business cards, and everything in the middle.”
One of these changes will be the ditching of the firm’s 1980s-originated “New World Vision, Old World Values” slogan in favor of “Building Wealth Through Property Since 1866.”
Along with the re-branding campaign will come an increase in the number of William B. May brokers. Lustgarten said the firm hopes to get to and stay at 60 to 80 brokers from around 20 currently, with all levels of experience.
He said that more experienced brokers at some of the city’s bigger brokerages have already approached him about switching firms, although he did not go into specifics. William B. May is also negotiating with New York Mortgage Company, Lustgarten said, about a partnership similar to what other brokerages have with mortgage firms, such as that of Prudential Douglas Elliman and Preferred Empire Mortgage.