Halstead takes Brooklyn family brokerage

Halstead Property last month bought Harbor View Realty, a small family brokerage in Brooklyn that has been selling homes for 27 years. The company’s president, Bess Dulany, made out well in the deal. She was simultaneously hired on as the director of sales for Halstead’s Brooklyn division.

Bess Dulany’s charge will include two new Halstead offices — one at 150 Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights and another at 162 Court Street in Cobble Hill — as well as her former Harbor View Realty office at 179 Atlantic Avenue, also in Brooklyn Heights.

The entire Harbor View staff remains the same, and Bess’ mother, Barry Dulany, Harbor View’s owner, has been hired as Halstead’s broker of record for Brooklyn. So far, the biggest difference has been the change of name to Halstead Brooklyn LLC. “We have a lot of autonomy,” Bess said. “It’s kind of up to me how to run the office.”

With the sale, Dulany’s team has expanded from 12 people working on an average of 10 properties at a time to 43 people, dealing with anywhere from 20 to 50 homes at once. In the future, Halstead hopes to add more brokers to the three Brooklyn offices, as well as more locations. “We’d like to establish a presence in Fort Greene, Williamsburg and Park Slope,” Dulany said.

Harbor View’s three decades in the business gave it deep roots in the community. But throughout Dulany’s five years at the firm — she came from a career in the music business, managing artists such as U2 and Suzanne Vega, as well as working in advertising — she had seen big Manhattan-based firms such as Halstead, Prudential Douglas Elliman and the Corcoran Group muscling their way into the booming Brooklyn residential market and buying up smaller firms.

Dulany conceded she had an if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em attitude about the corporate competition, saying that the advertising budget and marketing team that became available by joining Halstead are instrumental in attracting both buyers and sellers.

“They have a 22- or 23-person marketing team. They have this color brochure that goes out twice a year that goes into the New York Times — things that would be very cost-prohibitive in a smaller company,” she said.