Eastern Consolidated’s Paris appears as guest on Stoler’s show

New York, NY Daun Paris, president and co-founder of Eastern Consolidated, is Michael Stoler’s guest this week on his Building New York Stories show, which will air on CUNY TV and can be viewed on YouTube.com by clicking here.

During the interview, Paris highlighted how she and her partner, chairman and CEO Peter Hauspurg, formed Eastern Consolidated in 1981 and built it into one of the country’s preeminent full-service commercial real estate firms with over 80 brokers speaking 15 languages in three core divisions—investment sales, capital advisory, and retail leasing.

 “Eastern is a culture of achievement,” Paris told Stoler. “We attract and we look for those entrepreneurial, self-motivated individuals who have very high levels of emotional intelligence and we train them to be top performers using the AdvanceTrac program,” which combines structured sales management training with dynamic sales coaching.

The result is a platform that creates top producers, not just support players, in a dynamic, collaborative, team-focused, competitive, results-oriented environment.

Paris observed that Eastern Consolidated has retained its placed as one of New York City’s top brokerage firms because of its ability to change the paradigm, take risks, and identify opportunities in all market conditions.

Two years ago the company launched its Retail Leasing and Capital Advisory Divisions to complement its thriving Investment Sales Division, a move that has proven to be very synergistic for both clients and brokers. The Investment Sales Division closed over $2 billion in deals in 2015, a 27 percent increase over 2014 volume; the Retail Leasing Division is now closing two deals a week; and the Capital Advisory Division has completed over $1 billion in financing transactions in the last year. Many of these transactions are the result of referrals from brokers in the other divisions. 

The company created a new business model during one downturn by hiring a constellation of star brokers at a time when New York City’s brokerage community had shrunk from about 35 firms to a handful. Eastern Consolidated went against the conventional wisdom at the time and tripled its size, which resulted in the company getting a disproportionate share of the few deals that were available during this period. 

Paris also recalled that during another downturn, brokers at Eastern Consolidated were told, “Come up with ideas of where you want to fish where others are not. And it was some of the newer brokers that identified new opportunities in affordable housing, distressed assets, triple net lease, and retail condos and it proved to be very fortuitous for us.”

Eastern Consolidated recognized the importance of retaining its top brokers by creating the “Principals Group” — which now numbers 16 individuals who are either the firm’s high producers or key members of management, Paris said. The company contributes 40 percent of its income to a “Principal’s Pool” after a base paid to Paris and Hauspurg for taking 100 percent of the risk.  Since its inception, the Principal’s Pool has distributed millions of dollars to a group of people who were and are, key to Eastern Consolidated’s success. 

Michael Stoler’s Building New York Stories featuring Daun Paris will air eight times on CUNY TV in New York City between July 11 and July 24 and later in the summer on the more than 20 other cable systems that air Michael Stoler’s shows.