When billionaire builders Donald Trump, Jorge Perez and Steven Roth need a retail real estate broker, they more often than not turn to the same guy -- Robert K Futterman.
His company, RKF, has brokered $5.1 billion worth of space in the past seven years, including the malls of the original Trump Tower and the Time Warner Center in Manhattan. New York deals will account for half its $25 million in sales this year.
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Now Futterman, 46, who represents both tenants and landlords, is moving to ultrahot Sin City -- along with his buddies.
The Las Vegas Strip has 5 million square feet of shops. He predicts that by 2010 that number will increase by one-third and his firm will exclusively lease out 30 per cent of it.
"Many of the same New York owners we've worked with, like Trump and Perez, are now moving to Vegas," he says. Perez, through his Related Group, recently announced a $3 billion condo-casino complex with George Clooney and Brad Pitt; Trump is building condos with billionaire Phillip Ruffin.
Futterman is dipping his toe in the equity game, buying a piece of a 63-acre parcel of land with Starwood Resorts. With Strip land prices now $20 million an acre and rising, he might find brokering too tame for his blood.
