Howard E. Greenberg is a Westchester real estate professional who not only seems to know what”™s going to happen in real estate and development before it happens but has an encyclopedic knowledge of what already has happened as well. He”™s a regular contributor to the Business Journals, and his New Year”™s wrap-ups and forecasts are eagerly awaited by readers.
“I was brought up in Bayside, Queens, migrated to Westchester in 1974 to the Yonkers/Hastings border and now live in New Rochelle,” Greenberg told the Business Journals.
Greenberg has two grown children, a son in Virginia and a daughter in Texas. He has five grandchildren.
“I have two stepchildren by my wife Susan,” Greenberg said. “In late 1985 or so I was looking to make a career change. I was in the men”™s clothing business and decided it was not what I wanted to do with my life. Someone handed me a Westchester County Business Journal and on the front page was a market wrap-up article. A panel of prominent brokers in the area was talking about the market and the world of real estate negotiations and it sounded interesting.”
Greenberg said he started to call up the people who were on the real estate panel and got a sense of what the market was all about.
“Through total happenstance I made a cold call to a gentleman named Carl Austin,” Greenberg said. “Carl was a pioneer in office brokerage in Westchester. I had lunch with Carl and convinced him to hire me.”
Greenberg said that he had spent 12 years with Austin and the firm was typically a landlord”™s agent representing various buildings.
“We had leased a space to a very large insurance company. I was very proud of getting that account and signed them up as a national exclusive,” Greenberg said.
However, Austin felt differently about stepping outside of his company”™s Westchester-centric positioning in the marketplace, according to Greenberg.
“While I totally understand it and I am friends with Carl to this day, I just felt that for my personal development this was something that I could not turn down,” Greenberg said. “I chose to take the national account and split off on my own and this August will be 25 years of Howard Properties.”
Howard Properties Ltd. operates from offices at 200 Summit Lake Drive in Valhalla. His firm is a member of CORFAC International, an organization of independently owned commercial real estate services firms with 62 offices in North America and a market reach to 65 countries worldwide. Among Greenberg”™s clients have been The Westchester Business Center, the city of Yonkers, The U.S. Government General Services Administration, Family Services of Westchester, The Westchester County Department of Health, AKRF Inc., Stop & Shop, The Prudential Insurance Company of America, The Westchester County Bar Association and numerous professional services firms. Greenberg handles all types of commercial real estate, including office, flex, warehouse, industrial, data center and retail.
“I was a one-man shop in 1998; I”™m a one-man shop in 2022,” Greenberg said. “For some reason I always wanted to be on my own.”
Greenberg said that specializing in tenant representation has enabled him to fulfill the needs of his clients without having to spend a lot of time and effort marketing numerous buildings to dozens of prospects none of which might actually sign a lease.
“I wanted to be in the part of the business where I would have five exclusive deals and all five of them would happen,” Greenberg said. “I have clients that I have represented since before I started my firm. We go back 22, 25 years. I just finished two large deals for a client I”™ve represented exclusively for 22 years in deals from downtown Manhattan to Los Angeles, California.”
Greenberg said that networking and relationships are the key to his success in the real estate business world. He said his goal is to represent clients as their “out-of-house” real estate department. He said that he wants to know about the current operations and future plans of a client so that deals can be done intelligently. He pointed out that rent is expensive and often the second-largest expense for a company behind human resources.
“I have never had a hunger to experiment with expansion,” Greenberg said. “I don”™t have customers. I have clients. My clients are my relationship and when I represent them I really, really do have a fiduciary responsibility to them. I”™ve worked throughout the United States and I”™ve even done a little real estate in Europe. They trust me to do a deal for them in Westchester and they trust me to do a deal for them in California or Florida or New Jersey or Connecticut or wherever else because they know that I know what they need.”
Greenberg said that he has found an outstanding level of congeniality in the broker community in Westchester.
“Whether they”™re small company brokers or large company brokers it”™s a good community. In many cases we have close relationships and we trust each other. There is a fair amount of handshake relations that will get the deals done,” Greenberg said.
