Gumley Haft Kleier, the mid-sized Manhattan brokerage famed for its longstanding affiliation with HGTV’s “Selling New York,” has changed its name to Kleier Residential to capitalize on the name recognition the show has garnered for the firm.
The series, which premiered in 2010 and often includes appearances by the firm’s owners Michele and Ian Kleier and their daughters, Samantha Kleier Forbes and Sabrina Kleier Morgenstern, has made Kleier an even more recognizable – and bankable – brand in New York City real estate. Putting that name front and center on the firm’s website and marketing materials was an obvious choice, Michele Kleier said.
“We are the Kleiers. That’s really how we’re known,” she said, noting that the television show had raised the family’s profile in the industry.
The change is effective as of three weeks ago and the Gumley Haft Kleier website now automatically redirects to the new Kleier Residential site. “It’s going to take people a while to get used to it,” Kleier said.
The family-owned real estate firm, which was founded in 1993 as the brokerage arm of property management company Gumley Haft Residential Management, no longer has any direct tie to its management counterpart, though it still handles marketing for units in the 80 city buildings managed by Gumley Haft. The two companies also still share office space and a phone number. The Kleiers separated from Gumley Haft in 1995 and added Kleier to their company’s name, becoming Gumley Haft Kleier.
“People are saying ‘why didn’t you do it years ago?’” said Kleier of the industry’s reaction to the name change. “We were using a name we had outgrown.”
Kleier isn’t the first residential brokerage to have changed its name in recent years. Last year, Fenwick Keats Goodstein dropped the name Goodstein from its moniker after the management arm of its brokerage counterpart, Goodstein Management, sold to First Service Management. And, as The Real Deal previously reported, the city’s largest residential brokerage firm, Prudential Douglas Elliman, could drop “Prudential” from its name next year if it cannot hammer out a new franchise agreement with the property giant Prudential.