The Anderson-Ehrmann Team: A Profile in Partnership

True partnership is a rare thing. While the term tends to get tossed around to describe everything from a business venture to a marriage to a co-hosted brunch, few collaborative endeavors exhibit the mutual respect, shared values, implicit trust and explicit equity found between true partners. Andrew Anderson and Bruce Ehrmann should know. Since meeting and establishing the New York City-based Anderson-Ehrmann Team at Douglas Elliman in 2012, the two have built a still-flourishing business partnership founded on an uncommonly close professional and personal bond. In a recent interview with  Elliman Insider , Anderson and Ehrmann reflected on what brought them together, their shared passion for the intricacies of new developments and why Douglas Elliman makes a good home for partnerships. Elliman Insider: How did you become partners? Bruce Ehrmann: Going from a relatively small agency to what I perceived to be a larger, more generalist agency, I felt I might get a bit lost, so I decided to look for a partner. Such an arrangement didn’t exist at my old agency; it did at Elliman. I approached two or three people—Howard Lorber, Elliman’s executive chairman, had some suggestions—but nothing seemed quite right. At some point, someone suggested I speak to Andrew, who had a very good business at Elliman and didn’t appear to need a partner. But, as different as we were, we really hit it off. We both had immediate contributions to bring to a partnership, so we said, let’s give it a go. After a year or two, it was just evident that it was the right thing to do, that we worked very well together and that the whole was bigger than the sum of the parts. Andrew Anderson Andrew Anderson: I wasn’t really looking for a partnership. I had an established team, and when we met and started talking about it, I think we both realized pretty quickly that we had complementary skills and viewpoints. After we structured our first deal as a 50-50 partnership, we decided to approach everything that way going forward— when you succeed, I succeed, and vice versa. And it’s worked out very well for going on 12 years. Ehrmann: Furthermore, Andrew brought with him a terrific broker, Andrew Yeh , who had worked for him for many years prior, and I brought with me a very good young broker, Christopher Morales , who worked with me prior. And all these years later, the four of us are still the core of the Anderson-Ehrmann Team. That stability means a lot. And I think it comes from the fact that our core business values are the same. Andrew and I are very different: physically, age-wise, sometimes we get into political debates. But in terms of how we conduct our business, we’re interchangeable. Elliman Insider: What are those common core values? How do they define the Anderson-Ehrmann Team brand? Anderson: Integrity. A very strong moral compass. Honesty. Generosity. Empathy. And professionalism—a lot of people in real estate treat it as a hobby or simply as a means to make money, and they don’t necessarily hold themselves to a standard of professionalism or a basic level of decency that you would expect in almost any other industry. We don’t tell our clients what they want to hear—our job is to tell them the facts, lay everything out and then come up with a solution to achieve their goals. A lot of people don’t approach it that way because they’re fearful that they won’t get the listing or that they’ll come in with a price that’s too low. You need to be very clear, very upfront and very truthful when it comes to setting your clients’ expectations. Ehrmann: I think that Andrew and I have managed to navigate with integrity what can be a treacherous business. And this may sound trite, but it is impossible to overstate how important trust is in real estate—not just between a broker and a client, but also within the team. I’ve never experienced in a business relationship the kind of trust I have with Andrew and our team. It’s implicit. It’s just automatic. It’s amazing. Elliman Insider: New developments are also a big part of your brand. What do you especially enjoy about those projects? Bruce Ehrmann Ehrmann: Doing developments successfully involves a really specific, granular set of knowledge. Being able to look at 150 units on a floor plan and see what’s working, what isn’t working, what has to be changed, that this heating system doesn’t work for that building. You have stacking lists, release lists, managing the developers—they’re a very specific subset of rules, especially in New York, and they need to be handled. Many brokers want to do development but don’t realize how long it takes, how much work it is and how much skill is involved. And frankly, we’re very good at it. And here again, Andrew and I bring different talents to the table. But they blend. Anderson: I started in real estate in late 2003, and my first development was in 2005, so my learning curve was very steep. I thought it was important to understand all of the stuff behind the walls and everything that happens behind the scenes. So, on my second development project, I asked the developer if I could I sit in on the architects’ meetings, the trade meetings with the plumber and the HVAC guy and this and that. Bruce has done the same thing, and it gives us a much more in-depth understanding of the product, which allows us to communicate that to the prospective purchasers and brokers in a different way than a lot of brokers can. Also, Bruce and I have invested in and developed real estate on our own, so we understand how a principal looks at the process and can add a perspective that they might not have considered. Ehrmann: Actually, our reputation seems to have reached other markets. We’re working on a significant new development project in Detroit right now that is especially exciting—not only because we’re very involved with the concept and marketing,  but also because of the project’s scale, which could help transform a major American city. Elliman Insider: You mentioned the core values you share despite your differences. In what ways are you different—and how do those differences serve the partnership? Ehrmann: I think it’s rare when business partners who aren’t related are able to maintain a business relationship for as long as we have. And we’ve managed to do so for all the reasons that we’ve described. Andrew had things that I could not deliver, I had things Andrew could not deliver, and it didn’t take long before we turned that into an automatic process. Something else that is unusual about our business partnership: as Andrew mentioned, from day one, we split everything. We don’t get into who brought this in, who brought that in, who deserves more. It’s always been 50-50. Anderson:   I deserve more. Ehrmann: He  does deserve more! Because he’s young and has more strength. Elliman Insider: You’re like Lennon and McCartney—before they broke up, of course. Ehrmann: Andrew’s McCartney and I’m Lennon in that analogy. On the other hand, everyone loves Andrew. I wish I could say the same for me. Anderson: Well, you’re older, and with age comes grumpiness sometimes. Ehrmann: It’s because I’m going to die sooner, probably. Anderson: Not if you started doing all the health and wellness stuff that I’m doing. Ehrmann: I am seriously thinking about getting that cold plunge you recommended! Elliman Insider: You mentioned that the kind of business arrangement you formed here wasn’t possible at your previous firm. How else has Elliman enabled this unique partnership? Ehrmann: Not only has Elliman given us all the tools to maintain our success, but they’re also directly engaged in our success. Time and again, we can reach out—even to Howard—and get the assistance we need. Anderson: I think that’s it in a nutshell. Elliman is a really large company with a really broad reach. But for us, it’s like a mom-and-pop business. As Bruce said, we can have conversations with executives at the highest level and anywhere in between—Howard Lorber, Scott Durkin, Susan de França, Karen Mansour, Bryan Cohen, on and on and on. They’ve given us the ability to operate autonomously, take risks, succeed and fail, and they’ve given us all the support we need.