Best of the Boutiques

New York’s top small and mid-sized boutique residential real estate firms. (See story, “Big Small Firms,” on main page).

ALICE F. MASON LTD.

The Boss: Alice Mason

2002 Transactions: $30 million (Mason alone)

Agents: 15

Founded: 1960

Early on in her career, back in the 1960s, Alice Mason found her niche helping wealthy clients crack good co-op buildings they might not otherwise get into. Back then, that meant getting Alfred Vanderbilt, who was surprisingly considered “new money” by the Eastern Establishment, into a building. Sound difficult? Mason says today’s co-op environment is even more challenging, and that’s where her decades of expertise come in. “Back then it was about the social register,” she said. “Now, you’ve got to know who has power on the board. It’s more complicated than ever, and most brokers don t have a clue.” She takes exception to efforts by larger real estate competitors to subjugate Manhattan real estate by throwing money at it. “This will always be co-op city. Some people talk about it like it was commercial real estate. They don’t understand it.” The legendary broker is famous for dinner parties that have drawn the likes of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Mason has always maintained a staff of around 15 brokers, but every few years a larger company, like Sotheby’s, will come in and poach employees, which means that a lot of brokers out there were taught by Mason. “Anyone can learn real estate,” she said. “I hire people who have a network.”

DG NEARY REALTY

The Boss: Gil Neary

2002 Transactions: 178 sales and 43 rentals

Agents: 20

Founded: 1988

Gil Neary, who had been a broker at Bellmarc, was working for the Rockrose Development Corp. in 1987 when the market crashed and he found himself out of a job. “I thought, now I’ll do it myself,” he said, and opened up a brokerage in Chelsea with six agents. Today, the number of agents has grown to 20, and the company is a well-respected authority on the neighborhood. It’s also one of the only residential real estate companies that explicitly caters to the gay community. “We became known as an out-gay real estate agency,” said Neary. “We’ve been recognized as a firm that’s not afraid to be identified that way.” Neary thinks such openness provides a competitive advantage. “People looking for an apartment would rather have someone comfortable with their personal business. It’s a very personal thing, pulling one’s financial pants down before a co-op board.” The company also helps run the Gay Roommate Information Network, a roommate service “for people who call up and can only spend $700 on an apartment. It’s a community service type of thing,” Neary said. The DG in the company’s name is Dan Gerstein, formerly European Treasurer for Estee Lauder, who came aboard to manage the company in 1995. Neary and Gerstein have been around long enough to see Chelsea become a hot neighborhood and expand to the west, north and east. “It used to be you’d have to blindfold somebody to look at London Terrace [between 9th and 10th Avenues and 23rd Street] because it was so far away,” Neary said.

EDWARD LEE CAVE INC.

The Boss: Edward Lee Cave

2002 Transactions: N/A

Agents: 25

Founded: 1982

Edward Lee Cave, the doyen of high-end sales in Manhattan, entered the real estate world in a big way more than 25 years ago at Sotheby’s, when he started Sotheby’s International Realty, growing it to $200 million in annual sales within five years. In 1982, Cave struck out on his own, starting a boutique firm. The firm, with 25 agents, specializes in $10 million-plus properties on the Upper East Side and Central Park West. The company was responsible for the biggest sale ever in Manhattan (until the recent AOL Time Warner deal) when broker Kathy Steinberg sold corporate raider Saul Steinberg’s triplex penthouse at 740 Park Ave., which once belonged to John D. Rockefeller Jr. for $35 million in 2000. Another Cave broker, Linda Stein, completed deals for Billy Joel, Sting and Michael Douglas before leaving for Douglas Elliman. In December, the 63-year-old Cave said he was forming a partnership with Brown Harris Stevens because the two firms, one specializing in high-end properties and one specializing in properties across the board, could complement one another.

FOX RESIDENTIAL GROUP

The Boss: Barbara S. Fox

2002 Transactions: $200 million in sales

Agents: 40

Founded: 1989

When Barbara Fox created Fox Residential Group in 1989 with only five brokers, the focus was to “capture the upscale market on the Upper East and Upper West Side.” Fox has done that, selling to celebrities like Walter Cronkite and Robert Redford along the way. Now, having grown to 40 brokers, the company’s reach is wider, and “we do everything across the board,” she said. In 1994, in response to growing demand, the company created a corporate relocation and rental division which serves a number of foreign governments, investment banking houses, and Fortune 500 companies. Despite the growth, the North Carolina native maintains a hands-on approach. “I’ve structured things so that I can handle what’s going on at the office at all times. Our clients are always getting my 25-plus years’ experience” when they sign on, she said. The organization isn’t the first Fox has built; she created a 60-broker residential division of Cross & Brown Company in the 1980s. Fox was honored as the recipient of REBNY’s Henry Forster Memorial Award in 1997. She said she is seeing a move away from larger firms by brokers. “There is a tendency back towards smaller firms,” she said. “More and more brokers have had it with larger firms” and are applying to companies like Fox, she said.

GOODSTEIN REALTY

The Boss: Leonard Bayer

2002 Transactions: $320 million (includes NY, Long Island and Fla.)

Agents: 30

Founded: 1996

“We’re a family business that caters to families,” explains President Leonard Bayer of his company’s innovative approach to residential real estate. The firm was formed in 1996, as a spin-off of The Goodstein Organization, a development firm run by the family’s third generation. Bayer said his company is structured to suit a family’s needs throughout its lifetime from finding a place for kids graduating from college to locating an assisted living home for grandparents to helping Mom find an office through its commercial division. “Our people build their real estate practice like a doctor or lawyer would,” Bayer said. Strategies like Goodstein Realty Senior Lifestyles, which does relocations for independent or assisted care living, is just an example of the firm’s family approach.

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

GUMLEY HAFT KLEIER

The Boss: Michele Kleier

2002 Transactions: $70 million (for Kleier alone)

2001 Transactions: $352 million (company-wide)

Agents: 40

Founded: 1989

Michele Kleier, who started her firm in 1989, says it’s the personal service her company offers that draws clients. John Travolta, Neil Diamond, Warren Beatty, and Billy Joel would likely agree Kleier has sold to all of them. Initially a division of Gumley Haft Residential Management, the company is now owned by Kleier and her husband, Ian (the firms maintain a close affiliation). The company is much more than just Kleier and her celebrity clients these days with 40 agents, it’s what she considers a small to medium-sized firm. Young brokers cover the lower range, while experienced brokers do three-bedroom upmarket apartments. Kleier keeps a tight grasp on the firm’s day-to-day business. “I know about every deal that is going on,” she said. Kleier said she has been approached with “opportunities to be merged with another company or purchased,” but business wouldn’t be the same as part of some conglomerate. “We are here every day. Each deal is important to us.” Keeping it all in the family, daughter Sabrina Kleier Morgenstern is a broker there, too.

LESLIE J. GARFIELD CO.

The Bosses: Leslie Garfield, Jed Garfield

2002 Transactions: $63 million; 17 sales

Agents: 8

Founded: 1972

Called “The Dean of Townhouse Brokers,” Leslie J. Garfield & Co., Inc. is a true niche firm its entire business revolves around the 789 townhouse buildings in Manhattan. Managing partner Jed Garfield, who is Leslie’s son, said people are always slightly taken aback when they call up and ask about a specific address. “I’ll say, oh, that’s Mr. Smith’s place. People are surprised. But there’s not that many buildings to cover.” The business was started by Leslie, who “in his own quiet way, still does $40 million a year. There’s not a transaction he’s not involved in,” said Jed. Other family members also work for the firm, which has grown from two brokers seven years ago to eight brokers today. The key to success for the firm is “market coverage,” with each broker given a different slice of Manhattan to specialize in, said Jed. “Everyone in the office comes in and just canvases all day. Our business is not based on social connections.” Not that they don t have them, of course.

MASSEY KNAKAL REALTY SERVICES

The Bosses: Paul J. Massey, Jr. and Robert A. Knakal

2003 Transactions (first six months): $400 million (89 building sales)

2002 Transactions: $500 million (148 building sales)

Agents: 31

Founded: 1988

Paul J. Massey, Jr. and Robert A. Knakal decided to start this highly successful firm, which specializes in finding buyers for buildings under $20 million, back in the late 1980s while working for Coldwell Banker Commercial. In their mid 20s at the time, the duo was assigned to work on the Upper East Side for CB. “The only building owners that would listen to them were smaller building owners,” said Massey Knakal President John F. Ciraulo. “And they didn t care about CB’s national presence. So Bob and Paul decided to start their own business.” Last year, the company sold 148 buildings and brokered more investment property sales than any other firm, according to real estate information company CoStar. Currently, the company is on pace to nearly double last year’s sales total, and it has exclusive listings totaling $1.3 billion, Knakal said. The company is structured so that each broker covers an exclusive area. Ciraulo, for example, who joined the company in 1992, now specializes in the Murray Hill, Flatiron, and Grammercy Park areas. Massey Knakal has also encountered success in the outer boroughs. It started a Queens operation in 1997 and a Brooklyn operation last year, which now has six agents and which the company is looking to double in the next six months. “We feel we should have expanded there a long time ago,” said Ciraulo. “There are a lot of mom-and-pop shops that sell insurance, do mortgages and also sell buildings there.” Meanwhile, the company’s average sale in Manhattan has jumped from $3.5 million three years ago to around $5.5 million today. Focusing on helping sellers exclusively allows the company to “create a marketing frenzy,” said Ciraulo. “We d rather spend 100 percent of our time focusing on that instead of spending 50 percent of our time on buyers.”

PHYLISS KOCH REAL ESTATE

The Boss: Phyliss Koch

2002 Transactions: N/A

Agents: 12

Founded: 1970

Described as a “legend” among real estate brokers, Phyliss Koch has been in business for 34 years in Manhattan, including the last 12 in her offices on the Upper West Side. Koch has trained many of the other top brokers in business today, part of a real estate career that she claims predates the birth of the co-op and mortgages. “People didn t know what a co-op was when I started,” she said. “There were no mortgages.” Koch’s most memorable deal was selling Babe Ruth’s eight-room apartment at 110 Riverside Drive 25 years ago. Ruth had passed away in 1947, but his widow had lived on in the apartment before she died in the late 1970s. Koch, who does a majority of her deals on the West Side but also does a considerable amount on the East Side, prides herself on her discretion and straightforward approach. “You will never see my name in the paper on a deal,” she said. “My advertising is always no-nonsense. I also never give out my sales figures.” Koch, who lives in the San Remo and vacations in Atlantic Beach, has trained brokers like Michele Kleier, who worked with her for 17 years. “She’s a legend,” said Barbara Fox, another leading Manhattan broker.

P.S. BURNHAM INC.

The Boss: Patricia Burnham

2002 Transactions: N/A

Agents: N/A

Founded: 1983

Patricia Burnham, a power broker who has done deals for the likes of Calvin Klein and Connie Chung, is incredibly protective about divulging the details of her business, even the amount of employees she has working for her (many say it’s just her). That same approach has led to her success, she says. “I feel part of the reason that people come to me is that things stay confidential,” she said. Business is all referrals, of course, and Burnham doesn’t advertise. “I don’t get my doctor or dentist or lawyer out of an ad, and the same should be true for a broker.” One of her specialties: dealing with time-pressed CEOs. “I get deals done very quickly. I had a celebrity couple that was looking for two years and I found them a place in a half-hour. I know where you are going to buy, even before you look.” Lives on Park Avenue and brings clients around town in a black Mercedes, where they get access to her list of off-the-market properties whose owners “may sell for the right price.”

Recommended For You