“I’m a Letterman fan,” laughed Mr. Ezratty when asked who among the late-night hosts he prefers. “I kind of feel obligated to be a Letterman fan.”
MR. EZRATTY WAS BORN in Long Beach, Long Island, to a pair of longtime garment-district manufacturers. A competitive young man, he played high-school varsity baseball and other sports before taking the reins at his parents’ sportswear manufacturing company in the late 1970s. When the company went global, however, Mr. Ezratty chose to change careers rather than run the business from the Orient.
Armed with a Wharton School of Business degree but almost no real experience to speak of, save for a few deals he made on behalf of the family garment business, Mr. Ezratty set out for a career as a real estate broker.
“I met with 15 different firms and basically got 15 different offers,” said Mr. Ezratty, who added that his goal had always been to own property. “People figured Wharton School education, you own your own business and you’re entrepreneurial—it’s a good match. But, really, I had no real estate experience at all.”
When he was hired at Eastern Consolidated in 1985, Mr. Ezratty was among just four brokers at the four-year-old company, a number that would skyrocket to more than 40 brokers over the next two decades.
Along the way, he was included in Crain’s annual “40 under 40” list in 1996, in part because of the Ed Sullivan deal and those rapidly increasing parking garage leases. Mr. Ezratty has inked approximately 30 deals a year since the early ’90s, including dozens on behalf of big-name developers like Harry Macklowe and Steve Witkoff, among other titans.
But similar to many in Mr. Ezratty’s field, sales have dropped since last year, as fewer development deals are being made in a crushing economy.
“What we look at is sales, and the volume has dropped dramatically,” said Mr. Ezratty, the father of two children, one of whom celebrates her bat mitzvah this week and another who is touring colleges to study filmmaking. He lives with his wife, Debbie Ezratty, in Westchester. “For the last 15 years, I’ve done 25 to 30 deals a year, and this year maybe I’ve done 10 deals; and of those 10 about five of them were parking deals. So clearly the volume is way off.”
“I think there will be a flood of deals,” Mr. Ezratty added. “But it could take another six to 12 months to get to that point.”
jsederstrom@observer.com
