July 19, 2006   >> return to MAI in the news

MAI CEO about rentals
By Daniel Geiger

Residential Marketing & Brokerage
Residential Profile

HIGLIGHTED Manager:
Jerry Weinstein
CEO, President

Even before he officially started in real estate more than 20 years ago, Jerry Weinstein’s friends and co-workers would go to him to find out where the good deals were on apartments.

In the early 1980's, when Jerry Weinstein was a Brooklyn elementary school gym teacher whose martial art prowess made him a favorite among the students and teachers who were wowed by the fifth-degree black belt's spinning high kicks and board breaking punches, Weinstein found that his friends and co-workers were approaching him not for workout tips or how to repel an attacker on a dark city street, but where to score a cheap apartment.

In his spare time it turned out, Weinstein had cultivated a keen nose for finding deals and for a sense where the next up and coming neighborhood would emerge. Perhaps inspired by the gushing thanks of those who had tapped his knowledge, Weinstein decided to see if he could parlay his talent into a paycheck. He decided to give up teaching and, after a brief stint in the restaurant business, took what seemed like a natural step, beginning work for a residential real estate brokerage in 1982.

"I just decided to take the gamble and go into real estate," Weinstein said.

Weinstein started with Gardner Realty where he soon encountered certain restrictions he describes as integral to his decision, not long into his career in real estate, to stake out on his own.

Gardner, like many residential brokerages, had offices and brokers that focused on particular areas and neighborhoods in the city, a structure that ran in stark contrast to the freedom Weinstein enjoyed when he was an amateur broker and could refer apartment seekers to a variety of pads in any section of the city.

"I knew I wanted to work for myself," Weinstein said. "When I had been at Gardner, people would want to buy an apartment on the Upper East Side, but others would want to buy elsewhere and I would have to refer them to a broker that handled that neighborhood. If you're working with someone and you develop a relationship you don't want to tell them to go to someone else, you want to be able to stick with them and help them."

Weinstein also felt like he wasn't allowed the leeway to introduce a client to a neighborhood that perhaps they hadn't been familiar with but which could potentially meet the criteria of their search. Weinstein seemed to express that one of the key jobs of a broker is to sometimes broaden a client's perspective like this and that often the best deals possess a kind of impromptu magic generated when a tenant unexpectedly discovers an area that fits or even exceeds their concepts of Manhattan living.

"That's how a lot of great sales happen. When you show something that they love and that they never expected to find in a certain neighborhood," Weinstein said.

So not long into 1984 Weinstein started his own firm, Manhattan Apartments Inc., a brokerage that has a single office staffed with brokers that handle all of the cities neighborhoods.

"I wanted one center where people could come and have the whole city at their finger tips and have everything they need to get an apartment," Weinstein said. "We gave them information and professionals that knew the whole city, not just a neighborhood or two, and could really find them the right place."

With condo sales slowing in the city, Weinstein has shifted his firm's attention to the rental market lately, which it had focused on more heavily before the residential real estate boom and its flurry of sales.

"We want to claim our position as the leading rental company in New York," Weinstein said. "With the sales market taking a quiet turn after a tremendous run of years, my mission is to bring us back to our strength and redirect our main focus back to rentals, the part of our company that has done the most amount of business."

To better prepare his brokers for the cyclic nature of the real estate business, where certain sections of the market tend to flourish while others may not be as lucrative, Weinstein has begun training his brokers to become experts in both the sales and rental markets.

"I want the brokers here to be able to thrive during every part of the real estate cycle," Weinstein said. "Rental properties are reemerging and we are positioning ourselves as the premiere rental brokerage in the city."