When famed real estate broker Ariel Sassoon (featured here previously) told me, “You need to speak to Ceasar (Ezra) Salama. He is a master salesman, does multiple development projects, and above all, has a great story,” no more needed to be said.
Ceasar’s name is unique—yes, we talked about it—and so was his career path. Growing up in Deal, New Jersey, Ceasar thought he had his life all planned out. Since his family was wealthy, he had always thought that money would not be an issue—but then Hashem had other plans.
Ceasar began his career as a broker focused on leasing residential apartments in the city, then selling them, then finding properties for investors and developers, and finally becoming a developer, with a focus on New York-based properties, himself.
We discussed his journey from struggling broker to successful developer, his advice on how to deal with investors, and his story of how money changed him. Enjoy! —Nesanel
I was born and raised in Deal, New Jersey, and went to the Syrian yeshivah there. I’m named after my paternal grandfather. His Hebrew name was Ezra, but he went by Ceasar, which was not uncommon in Egypt, where he was born. He passed away when I was young, but I do remember him. My father was born in America, along with the rest of his siblings. My other three grandparents, and my mother, were also born in America, so I’m as American as apple pie.
“My grandfather worked hard and built himself up from a handkerchief salesman to a successful tablecloth manufacturer. Then he sold the tablecloth business to his partners in the 1980s and bought a shopping center, which became Ceasar’s Bay Bazaar, an indoor flea market. It did very well for a long time. Many people have told me how they opened their first business there, and they had the highest regard for my grandfather.
“At some point, he accepted an offer to lease that space to a national tenant, and that’s how the family ended up in real estate. When I was growing up, my father worked with my grandfather. I loved the idea of creating big, beautiful buildings, and I figured I could skip the first few steps and go straight to real estate. I didn’t realize that you needed the money to do it.
“I have an older sister, and a younger brother and sister. I was a shy child. I was decent at sports, and I made my friends through that. I was smart, but I wasn’t a great student. Actually, when I was in kindergarten, after they gave us our first standardized test, the school called my mother just before Shabbat asking her to come in on Monday to discuss the results. I was the youngest in the class, so she was nervous that they wanted to hold me back, but they said it was the best test score they’d ever received.
“I had the brains, but I had trouble paying attention; I was spaced out half the time. When I got into high school, I became less shy, but I still wasn’t motivated in my studies. I just assumed that the world was going to figure itself out for me.
“Parnasah wasn’t on my mind as a child because we never struggled, baruch Hashem. My grandfather’s business was a great success; my father was the president of the shul and on the school board. Everything was fine, and I wasn’t concerned about making money when I was older.
“In the summers of high school, I worked for an event planner, helping set up parties. It paid enough for me to be able to go out with friends.
“After I graduated high school, I went to community college so that I could get better grades and be accepted to a more prestigious school. I got a 4.0 GPA there and transferred to Baruch College in Manhattan, where I pursued a degree in real estate and business. I wanted to develop and create. At the same time, I took a job as a floor manager at a kid’s department store in the Bronx, owned by a family friend. They were a distributor of school uniforms to public schools.
“My job was to bring in different schools as clients. It was the first time I put my sales skills to use and came up with a selling strategy. In the summer, we went to the schools, met with the principals and PTA presidents, and offered them significant discount cards for their personal use in our store. Once they were in the store, we sold them on using us to provide uniforms for their schools. That summer, we took the business from $1 million to $3 million.
“Then reality hit. My father had sold his position in some properties to pursue another venture: building a beautiful, high-end, large-scale tennis center and fitness club that would cater to Deal and other affluent communities in New Jersey. I assumed that I was going to run this business; it was going to be my life.
“In 2008, the financial world collapsed. The tennis center project never got off the ground. We lost everything. Our cars were towed out of the driveway and our house went into foreclosure. My parents got divorced. My visions of a cushy smooth-sailing life were over.
“Do you remember what the job market was like in 2009? We were, essentially, competing with our parents for jobs right out of college. But it ended up teaching me how to be in the workforce.
“While I was in Baruch, I started working part-time for A&H Acquisitions, a retail property developer in Manhattan. I was trying to find deals for the company to purchase. For 18 months, I didn’t make a dollar—nothing. The market was tough and there were far fewer buyers than there were sellers. However, I was working under the head of acquisitions and I learned a lot from him.
“I was almost failing school, because I had too much on my plate: trying to save myself, my parents, and the world. I needed some time to fix my grades without financial worries on my mind. I took some time off, and my grandmother graciously gave me a loan to help me for a few months.
“Once I finished school, I went looking for a job. I had one requirement: a weekly paycheck. I didn’t even consider being a real estate broker, because it didn’t come with a steady income. I walked from Canal Street all the way up to Times Square, stopping in every store along the way, but no one offered me a job. I was desperate.
“A few years earlier, Morris Sabbagh, whom I knew from my community, had asked me if I wanted to join him in his new real estate brokerage company, KSR, but I had turned him down. Now, he was launching a retail leasing division—today it’s the biggest retail leasing company in the city—and he had only three employees. I told him that I couldn’t survive months without a paycheck. He promised to give me leads and let me work in the residential leasing department, which turns over deals way quicker. So I joined.
“I did my first two deals with him after a week and a half on the job and got a check for $1,900. Over the course of that summer, I leased around 30 apartments. I had just met my future wife when I was working there, so I had some parnasah before I got married at 22.
“KSR had very good relationships with owners of buildings and condos. They had some exclusives on buildings, which included furnished apartments. It was a nice little niche that they had carved out through their own furnishing company, Furnish Dwellings.
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