COs Third Annual List of NYCs Real Estate Firms with a Dozen Brokers or Less

JRT Realty Group
Founder: Jodi Pulice
Date established: 1996
Number of brokers/agents then: 3
Number of brokers/agents now: 9 (plus 1 employee)

In February 2016, Jodi Pulice celebrated 20 years since establishing JRT Realty Group, a small brokerage that has a strategic partnership with Cushman & Wakefield. The firm is certified under the Minority or Woman-owned Business Enterprise program, and all but one of the firm’s six executives are female.

“We’ve accomplished bringing in more women and minorities into the CRE business,” Pulice said. “You used to go in a room and see just suits, and that’s it. We don’t see that at all anymore.”

Pulice said she encourages all of her employees to get their brokerage licenses, even if they begin as an admin at the firm. The sole non-licensed employee is in the process of getting her license, she added.

JRT brokers market such properties as Jamestown’s Falchi Building at 31-00 47th Avenue and Vanbarton Groups’s Zipper Building at 47-16 Austell Place, both in Long Island City. Pulice’s firm has specialized in the western Queens neighborhood for more than 15 years, working on several office and retail deals for Jamestown and Vanbarton.

“We were there when it wasn’t cool to be there,” she said. “Now it’s cool to be there.”

C&W and JRT are tasked with marketing the retail portion of the 66-year-old Port Authority Bus Terminal on the West Side of Manhattan between West 40th and West 42nd Streets. The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey announced a $90 million plan in January 2015 to spruce up the existing structure’s retail (a later plan to build a new bus terminal doesn’t impact this project).

St. Louis-based OHM Concessions signed a lease in December 2015 to open a 5,943-square-foot upscale food court in the space previously occupied by the U.S. Postal Service, Jamba Juice and a deli.—T.C.