Innovation and curiosity drive NYC firm
 BY JASON SHEFTELL
DAILY NEWS REAL ESTATE CORRESPONDENT
When the president of the company is a scholar of the Enlightenment, an 18th-century period characterized by reason, the organization is likely going to be forward-thinking.
Ardor New York Real Estate's President and CEO Chris Shiamili, 41, runs a 120-agent company out of a 10,000-square-foot midtown office while working on his master's degree in Humanities and Social Thought at New York University.
The two pursuits feed into ea...
Read More
BY JASON SHEFTELL
DAILY NEWS REAL ESTATE CORRESPONDENT
When the president of the company is a scholar of the Enlightenment, an 18th-century period characterized by reason, the organization is likely going to be forward-thinking.
Ardor New York Real Estate's President and CEO Chris Shiamili, 41, runs a 120-agent company out of a 10,000-square-foot midtown office while working on his master's degree in Humanities and Social Thought at New York University.
The two pursuits feed into each other. Shiamili applied market economy techniques and Enlightenment philosophy to turn Ardor into one of the most constantly changing and strategic-thinking local real estate companies operating today. Hardworking, persistent and void of pretense, Ardor might be the meat and potatoes of the New York property industry. They have one office, working out of a huge desk-lined room. In an openly democratic format, their two top managers sit on the floor with them. Shiamili hardly ever wears a tie.
"As the market adopts, so do we," says Shiamili, sitting in his office furnished with a desk, two chairs, a couch, and black-and-white photographs of Africa leaning on the wall. "The trademark of our company is innovation. We were the first company to provide photographs of all our properties online. We were the first to advertise on local television. I'd put our current technology up against anyone else's in the business."
***
Since its beginning 14 years ago, the company has amassed 150,000 current subscribers to its Web site, accrued 500,000 Web visitors per month and consistently provided the lowest-cost rentals to New Yorkers all over the five boroughs. Before their current location on the eighth floor of 1040 Sixth Ave., they've had four offices. In the past five years, Ardor has grown a sales division and, more recently, started a small commercial department.
Ardor's five-borough strategy is two years in front of other agencies, placing them well ahead of competitors in the listing race for outer-
borough rentals. To go with 3,000-plus Manhattan rental listings, Ardor has amassed over 470 listings in Queens and 751 in Brooklyn. By contrast, another top Manhattan-based rental company has four listings in Queens and 96 in Brooklyn.
With most of his waking life dedicated to serious thought and strategic discussion, Shiamili works with two managing directors to implement Ardor's tactics. The company uses Web-based technology to deliver up-to-the-minute listings to customers. It has daily training seminars for agents on the rental and sales front. Every morning at 10, Brian Ullman, managing director, rental division, gives a "New Listing" class focusing on creating relationships with rental landlords
"Currently, 20% of our rental volume is from agents renting apartments through landlord accounts they have developed," says Ullman, who goes every Saturday to the New York Real Estate Institute to recruit potential agents. "Our penetration has been so successful, we're starting to capitalize on openings among Manhattan landlords unhappy with existing relationships."
Steve Love, managing director, sales division, ensures Ardor's Web site drives 20 to 30 sales leads per week to Ardor agents, a number three to four times the new business leads given to agents at larger companies. Love monitors Craigslist.com and local newspapers for people trying to sell their homes themselves. Those ads represent opportunity for new Ardor agents looking for clients who may eventually need an agent to complete the transaction.
"The Internet has killed the middleman," says Love. "Who uses travel agents today? But real estate agents are still here. There's a reason for that. We make something very hard easier."
Ardor's back-end technology system also tells them at all times which agent has the keys to a rental property and how many times that property has been shown. An up-to-the-second direct-to-customer RSS feed allows Ardor to notify people looking for certain-priced apartments in specific neighborhoods that a listing has just become available. Daily updates of new listings arrive in an Ardor Web subscriber's E-mail box nightly around 11.
"You have to have vision, strategy, tactics and execution to stay ahead," says Shiamili, a native of Cyprus who came to America in 1989 to continue his education. "Recently, the business changed from new technologies to human capital. I was obsessed with technology for 10 years. That is in place. Now, our focus is on training our people to ensure they have the tools to remain more productive than agents for other companies."
***
Ardor drives performance by awarding agents with top monthly sales and rental figures with iPhones and vacations to Rome and Paris.
"People here are really working," says Shiamili, referencing the French philosopher Rousseau in one sentence and a Nobel Prize-winning economists in another. "Emphasizing cooperation at work and getting people to work with each other is critical for success in business management. Having the proper mechanisms — structure and hierarchy — in place to supervise and control people is equally critical. I believe the concepts of ‘cooperation,' ‘hierarchy' and ‘control' are inseparable if one wants to achieve anything in the workplace or in society at large. That's what we do."
|