Peter Braus and James Wacht
Peter Braus and James Wacht
Managing Principal; President and Principal at Lee & Associates NYC
Last year's rank: 93
After hiring over 30 new brokers toward the end of 2018, Lee & Associates NYC had every reason to believe 2019 would be a great year, and it was. Commission revenues increased by 29 percent over 2018, for a total consideration of $889 million over 24 investment sales transactions and 345 leases.
“We focused on growth and diversification of our services,” said Peter Braus, the company’s managing principal. “We grew by about 50 percent, and also established an investment sales division, which was a significant new avenue for us.”
Major deals included bringing streetwear brand Kith into 58,000 square feet at 25 Kent in Williamsburg, representing HelloFresh in taking 43,000 square feet at the 60-story 28 Liberty Street, and cementing City Winery’s relocation to 32,000 square feet at Pier 57.
“The timing of COVID is unfortunate, because they were supposed to open in April,” said Braus of the latter deal. “It’s a real game changer for the music scene in New York. It’s going to be a great music venue when it opens.”
When COVID hit, the company tightened its belt. Braus and Wacht cut their own salaries. Some nonessential employees were furloughed, and others took salary cuts as well.
“We’re an independently-owned brokerage company. We don’t have a deep-pocketed private equity firm behind us,” said James Wacht, Lee & Associates’ president and principal. “It was very important to make sure we were in a position to ride out the storm.”
Wacht said that landlords and vendors alike have been cooperative in taking lower fees and helping the company cut costs.
As far as upcoming projects, they recently signed a 430,000-square-foot retail-and-office development in Long island City that they’ll be marketing for lease. On the tenant side, they’ll be working to help clients, including veterinary clinic Small Door and ice cream shop Van Leeuwen, expand.
“We have some tenant representation projects that are really interesting,” said Braus. “The breadth of tenants in the marketplace is much less than it was. The ones who are out there looking are very smart and savvy, and are looking to take advantage of once-in-a-lifetime deals in terms of leasing.”—L.G.
