Fast-growing residential brokerage Miron Properties has launched a property management division, founder Jeffrey Schleider said, after a busy year in which the Manhattan-based firm also expanded to Brooklyn and delved into commercial brokerage.
The property management division launched in January, Schleider said, and Miron is already managing a total of 67 rental units in three buildings on the Lower East Side: 198 Rivington Street, 114 Ridge Street and 118 Ridge Street. The new division currently employs three people and will hire an additional three to five in the next year or year and a half, said Schleider, who is leading the group himself.
Property managers handle a building’s finances — paying the mortgage, taxes and utilities — and maintain the physical property on behalf of landlords. Schleider said he was prompted to start the new division after noticing that landlords Miron works with were “always looking for good building managers.”
“Our firm has always expanded organically,” Schleider said of Miron, which launched in 2009 and now has 55 agents. “When the demand is such that it’s overwhelming, that’s when we move with something.”
And synergy with the firm’s residential brokerage arm will help the company’s bottom line, he said, since Miron will have the exclusive marketing rights for any building it manages and will aim to keep the vacancy rate at zero.
Other residential brokerages with dedicated property management divisions include longtime industry stalwarts Brown Harris Stevens and Douglas Elliman, which purchased Bellmarc Property Management from the Bellmarc Group in 2010. But it’s rare for an upstart firm to delve into property management, which historically has small profit margins.
“Of the new generation of brokerages, I think we are one of the first” to move into property management, Schleider said. “It’s an area where the revenue isn’t obviously there, and that can be intimidating for some people, but we think we can add a lot of value.”