John Gomes On His Most Beloved Condo Project, Fredrik Eklund and More

Yes, that John Gomes. The one who appeared on the HGTV series “Selling New York” and the Bravo series “Million Dollar Listing New York.” But he’s also out in the workaday world of luxury condo sales, where he can count James Bond actor Daniel Craig, fashion model Gigi Hadid, and the OG Spiderman himself Tobey Maguire among his client list. 

For more than 20 years Gomes has made a name for himself in residential real estate. As part of the famed Eklund|Gomes team at Douglas Elliman, he and partner Fredrik Eklund have — with the help of a team of almost 100 brokers — closed over $15 billion in residential deals and sold out over 75 new developments. 

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Gomes recently sat down with Commercial Observer to discuss his career, what makes him passionate about real estate and design, as well as his soulmate-level partnership with Eklund. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Commercial Observer: How did you discover your passion for design and real estate? 

John Gomes: My interest for design is deeply rooted in beauty, and I’m very sensitive to my surroundings. I’ve always been that person who will take the longer road to get somewhere because it’s a more beautiful road. I really don’t like walking on ugly streets. I like to be inspired by nature. I’ve always been obsessed with beauty, and that grew into an understanding of what luxury was. I started to learn more about interior design by reading magazines like Architectural Digest and Elle Decor.

I’ve always had a passion for things like fashion and art and culture as well as design and architecture. I’ve always collected those magazines, and Fredrik, my business partner, very often makes fun of me, because if you come to my country home in Connecticut, you will find I don’t even know how many stacks of magazines there are. I collect paper magazines, and I flip through them and I tear them one page at a time. I’m very critical, and something has to look fresh and new and different to capture my attention, and that deserves a tear.

It was in business school, right around the year 2000, I went to Baruch business school for two years and graduated with an MBA in entrepreneurship. Everybody was going into finance, and everyone thought I was so crazy because I was getting this degree called entrepreneurship. People couldn’t even say it at the time. People couldn’t spell it, that’s for sure.

What happened after you graduated business school?

It was funny, when I graduated, I was like, I actually don’t know what I want to do. However, what I do know is that I want to be my own boss. I wasn’t going to have a job where I had a boss. I wanted to be in control of my own destiny. I wanted to work hard, and I wanted to see the results that I would get on my own merit. That said, I didn’t know what I wanted to do! 

So I asked myself that very question. Guess where? In my country house surrounded by that stack of magazines. So I was like, “OK, John, great. Now look at you, you smartass. You’ve got an MBA, but what do you do with it?” So then I asked myself, “What do I love? What am I passionate about? What do I want to do?” And I looked down at the pile of magazines, and I realized, “Well, John, maybe you want to do something in interiors, maybe you want to be an interior designer, maybe you want to be an architect.” I didn’t know what exactly, but I knew that it was going to be something creative. 

The thing with me is I am creative, and I love that side of my brain, but I’m also Mr. Business ​​and I really like using that part of my brain, too. I like communicating in legalese. I like accounting. I like the finance part. I really love business, but I also love the creative side. 

How did that bring you to a career in real estate design, sales and development?

In or around 2002 I was working as a maî​tre d’ at Balthazar, and Michael Shvo, who at the time was the No. 1 real estate broker in New York, was my client at Balthazar. One day he saw me saying goodbye to [actor] Eva Mendes. As she was on her way out she said, “Bye love, kiss kiss,” and then Shvo came up to me and asked how I got to know her so well. 

And he was smart because he had put two and two together and he said “You know all these people from this really cool place, and you have all their phone numbers,” and I wasn’t making the connection because I didn’t know how real estate worked and how you make commissions, but he had put two and two together and for a long time tried to get me to come off my post at Balthazar. But I was like, why would I ever want to leave this job?

Long story short, he convinced me, and I decided to take the leap of faith. I said to myself, “You know what? That’s real estate, that’s architecture, that’s design.” And very early on in my career, I realized that I was only interested in a specific type of real estate, and that was new developments. And I was very drawn to the beautiful, the luxurious, the high-end and the sophisticated. 

So now I’m a new development marketing specialist, and I’m a co-founder of a team that practices real estate in five states, that has 100 people working with us, and I get to do lots of new developments, but I also get to do lots of other luxury projects as well. 

So you ended up working with Shvo to start?

This is such a crazy story. The day that I came to Douglas Elliman to work with Michael at the corporate headquarters was his last day working at the firm. It was a surprise to him, to me, to everybody. It was the big story of the day — Michael and Elliman decided to part ways on the day that I was coming through the front door! 

So that was the first decision I was charged with: Do I leave to go with Michael, who was saying, “I’m starting my own firm. You should come with me. It’ll be great.” Or do I go to Douglas Elliman and work with this established company that’s been around for more than 100 years? I decided that I was not going to take a risk and go with Michael to do something that was unproven, and I’d already made my decision that I was going to do this real estate thing. 

I was super disappointed because Michael was in the corporate headquarters, and, in my mind, that was a big deal for me: I had to work at the corporate headquarters of Douglas Elliman. Coming into this I had set my sights to be a Michael Shvo when I started. 

What happened next?

Then I talked to one of the managers who helped me come in with Michael, and he was like, “Look, John, you don’t have any experience. There’s nobody here that you’re coming to. You can’t come to the corporate headquarters, and, really, you’re not even going to be able to do sales, because you don’t have anyone to help you and we just do luxury.”

So, I’m thinking, “OK, this is getting worse by the minute. What’s gonna happen?” Then he said, “Well, we do have a rental division, and you can start off in that office, and I’ll oversee things, and I’ll help you and introduce you to the right people.” All I could think was, “Oh my gosh, I did not do all of this to become a rental broker.” Nothing against rental brokers, but that was not what I was going to be doing. Then I thought, “You know what, John, you’re not going to do that forever, and you have to get your foot in the door, and you will survive.”

I went to the rental division, they sat me down at this desk, and I looked around — this is not what I expected. It wasn’t what I envisioned for myself. I had this cardboard box of things I brought from home that I never unpacked, and people would ask me why I wasn’t unpacking my things. I said to everyone, “I’m here temporarily, yeah, and I’m actually going to be going to the corporate headquarters.” Because I thought I was such a big shot. And they all thought that was so funny. They were like, “This one is a character.” 

How did you eventually get to the corporate headquarters?

On my first day working in the rental division I connected with a friend who was at the company who needed help with 275 Greenwich Street. He needed me to help him run an open house because he couldn’t be there. All of these people came in, and I just kept asking everybody if they had a broker, and one guy walked in and he didn’t have a broker and I said, “I will be your broker, and, if there is anything else you look at after this, ​​call me before speaking to that broker because I will represent your interest. So let me handle things for you.”

Two hours later he calls me back saying he found something he liked. I negotiated the purchase of that apartment for him that day, and, at the end of that process, after we have an accepted offer, he sits down and says to me, “There’s one problem.” It’s always one problem in real estate. 

He turned to me and said, “I own an apartment, and I have to sell that apartment before I can buy this apartment.” I said, “No problem, I’ll be your broker.” My first deal in real estate was representing a purchaser and representing a seller who was the same person, so two deals in one. I was off to the races, and very shortly after that I got my third deal. 

After my third deal, I called the corporate headquarters and I said to Steven James [Douglas Elliman’s president at the time], “This is John Gomes, do you remember we met?” “Oh yes,” he said. “Yeah, you sent me to the rental division and, well, I’ve just done my third sale.” He was shocked, “Your third sale. Did you do any rentals?” I said, “No, Steven, I’m not a rental broker. I’m a sales broker, and I need a desk in the corporate headquarters.”

Long story short, I took my box, moved my things, and said to all the people around me that I’m going to the corporate headquarters. 

How did you and Fredrik Eklund become business partners?

When I started at Douglas Elliman I was all alone and I was starting in new developments, and, at the time, Fredrik was in charge of his first new development at the Onyx Chelsea. I had sold a couple of apartments there, and, as a result, Fredrik invited me to a very fancy lunch at what used to be the Four Seasons to celebrate the success of the Onyx and the agents who had sold multiple units there. So I went to lunch and I met him, spent time with him, and I also met Shaun Osher, the co-founder of Core Real Estate, where Fredrik was working at the time.

Fredrik told Shaun he should meet with me, so I went to a meeting with him and I had such an incredible interview with Shaun. I wasn’t looking to leave Douglas Elliman. I was very happy with my corporate office seat, and I had recently done a deal worth $500,000 in commission. But, at the end of the meeting with Shaun — and I will never forget this, I can still see his blue eyes sparkling — he said, “John Gomes, I am going to make you a star.” Shaun Osher, he’s so handsome, and he’s so convincing, and he’s the best salesman in the world, and he has the most beautiful, sparkling blue eyes, and, when he said that, I heard ka-ching, and I just got so mesmerized.

But it was all happening so fast. I was at Douglas Elliman, the No. 1 firm, and I’m at the corporate headquarters, and I just did this really big deal, but it felt like this is my path that I’m supposed to be on. And I thought about it, and thought about it, and I thought about it, and I thought: How foolish can I be?

At most firms, when you have a $500,000 commission that’s going to get paid to you in the future, if you leave that firm, you leave 50 percent of that money on the table. So I had to really think long and hard about that, and I thought it’s $500,000 and, if I leave, it becomes $250,000. But then I thought about how a couple weeks prior I had nothing. There was no $500,000. It was like fake money to me, because I didn’t even know what that would look like, what it would feel like, if it could even fit in my bank account. And I decided to move the money part aside and allow myself to really process that interview with Shaun and that ka-ching moment. 

I also had this feeling about Fredrik, who was a new person to me, but there was just something about him. I’m a person with a very strong intuition, and the older I get the more I trust that intuition deeply. So I went to Steven James and I gave him the commission slip for $500,000 and also my two weeks notice. He said, “But you’re leaving $250,000 on the table.” I said, “You might see it that way, but I see it as the opportunity to make a lot more than $250,000 in the next three years by leaving this job and going to that one, because that seems like a better fit for me right now.”

So I went to my new office, and Fredrik and I became closer. He’s a funny guy, he’s doing what I like, and he’s really good at it. We formed this beautiful friendship. Fredrik always says, “You’re my cosmic brother from a faraway universe.” 

We were sitting back to back at Core, and he was a mess. His desk was filled with paper and filled with opportunity and future bank deposits, as far as I’m concerned, and I just saw that he needed my help. It wasn’t our plan initially that we were going to work together, we were just going to work at the same company.

People used to call us the dynamic duo, and we are dynamic still to this day. When the two of us are put together in a room, magic happens. 

How did you end up back at Douglas Elliman?

It was during the Great Recession that Fredrik and I were talking, and that’s when he came up with this idea to do a pilot for a real estate television show. So we hired a photographer, and this guy came in and we wrote a script, and we had a stretch limousine come and pick us up and bring us to a helipad where we got on a helicopter and lifted up over the New York skyline and just looked down upon it while being filmed and were just like, “Wow, look at all the opportunities down there, what we could do with this city. We’re changing the skyline of the city that we live in.” We were just filming ourselves as agents doing what we were doing because we wanted to tell that story. 

The show didn’t get picked up, it didn’t have a name, but then became an HGTV show called “Selling New York,” and I became a lead character on that show during the first season. Shortly thereafter Fredrik got a call from the Bravo network for a show called “Million Dollar Listing” that was in Los Angeles, but they wanted to expand to New York, and he was cast.

But there was a conundrum because we were working for Core. Shaun Osher was working with HGTV and had a noncompete clause for working with other networks, meaning any agent working at Core could not do another competing real estate show on another network. 

We took a calculated, measured risk, and thought about the viewership of Bravo and the viewership of HGTV. Fredrik was hungry to do TV, and he was made for television. I was doing it because it was good for our business, but I’m not a natural on camera. 

We knew we had to leave Core and go to another firm. In the end, it just made sense only for us to go to Douglas Elliman.

Do you have a project that’s particularly near and dear to your heart?

The one that is very special to me is the one that probably everybody talks about these days: 64 University Place in Greenwich Village. It’s a very, very special project that I have been deeply involved with. 

I had a very good relationship with one of the developers, Ameesh Agarwal, and he and I saw eye to eye on everything. He believed in me, and he trusted me so much. Generally speaking, I have a whole team of people that help me do what I do. He did not prefer that. He wanted me one on one. And, so, we sat there and created all this magic together, even down to the kind of brick that we wanted to use.

I was begging him to put in arches. So, if you look at 64 University, the building is all about arches, and it’s so beautiful, and it was so well received.

There were some challenges. We had a strategic marketing plan for it, and we had to rip up that plan because the commercial tenant in the building was not leaving and didn’t want to leave, so it was kind of a battle to get them out. It took longer than anticipated.

Also, I saw a changing marketplace, and changing in the opposite direction from what the developer wanted it to be. And I just thought, “Oh, man, this market is about to get soft, and this is going to be bad because we have this beautiful building, and we’re never gonna be able to sell at the numbers that we told him, which was $2,800 a square foot.” 

I didn’t know what to do, so I called Fredrik and we both loved that building and were both going to buy a unit in that building. This was the first time both of us ever bought in the same project. So we were talking to our publicist about what to do, and he called a reporter at Bloomberg who agreed to do an exclusive about these two real estate guys buying in the same building before the selling even begins. 

So the article came out, and the next day we had over 400 registrations overnight from one Bloomberg article. It gave confidence to the marketplace that people on the team were buying in the building, and they felt like they should buy in it. We still hadn’t listed it, and we sold all 28 of those apartments completely off market.  

Amanda Schiavo can be reached at aschiavo@commercialobserver.com.