For over the past 25 years, Michele Kleier, President and Chairman of Gumley Haft Kleier, has been a major force in Manhattan’s highly competitive Residential Brokerage arena.
Specializing in the sale of luxury cooperatives, condominiums and townhouses from Tribeca to the Upper East Side, she has brokered the sale of over a billion dollars of real estate and has been featured repeatedly as one of New York's top ten brokers in New York Magazine's cover story "The Most Powerful Real Estate Brokers in New York." She is quoted weekly in The New York Times, The New York Post, The New York Observer, The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, and featured on Fox 5 News, the WB Channel 11, Live! with Regis and Kelly and NBC's Access Hollywood.
In 1995, she launched the Residential Brokerage firm Gumley Haft Kleier, an elite boutique agency which covers all of Manhattan. Prior to that, she was President of Michele Kleier Real Estate Inc, which she ran for a decade.
Michele is quite unique in that she is one of the few owners of a Real Estate Brokerage company who is also an active broker. She is known for her integrity, discretion, professionalism and uncanny knowledge of all high-end buildings in Manhattan. In addition to overseeing a sales staff of over 40 ambitious brokers, she negotiates some of the largest and most high profile deals in Manhattan.
Her clients have included many of New York's most prominent families and individuals, as well as the city’s power elite in the business, entertainment and sports worlds, including Billy Joel, Neil Diamond, Richard Gere, Katie Couric, John Travolta, Barbra Streisand, Diane Keaton, Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino.
Michele received a Masters Degree from Columbia University. She is married to Ian Kleier, who also serves as Co-President of Gumley Haft Kleier, and mother to daughters Samantha Kleier Forbes and Sabrina Kleier Morgenstern, both graduates of Horace Mann and the University of Pennsylvania who are Vice Presidents of Gumley Haft Kleier, and son Jonathan, a graduate of Emory University and Horace Mann. She is a dog lover who supports multiple animal charities including the ASPCA, Bide A Wee, Stray From the Heart, and is currently working to stop puppy mills for The Humane Society.
Michele was elected to the Board of Directors of the Real Estate Board of N.Y. She's also on the Board's Interfirm Committee, teaches their ethics class and frequently is a guest speaker at functions there. She has served on the following REBNY committees: 1991-1993, Education Subcommittee, 1993-1994, Executive Subcommittee, 1994-2010, Interfirm Forum, 1996-1999, Residential Ethics Committee, Code of Ethics Task Force, 2005-Present, Residential Board of Directors and as a REBNY NYS Approved Education Instructor. Her close affiliation with Gumley Haft L.L.C., which manages close to 100 buildings in Manhattan, gives her unique insight into Manhattan’s finest cooperatives and condominiums.
While much of her competition is owned by National conglomerates, Michele is determined to keep Manhattan Residential Real Estate a local business run by smart New Yorkers for smart New Yorkers.
She lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and has residences in Boca Raton, Florida as well as Atlantic Beach, Long Island.
In late 2009 Gumley Haft Kleier was selected as one of two Manhattan real estate companies to headline HGTV's runaway hit real estate reality TV show, SELLING NEW YORK.
The TV series became an overnight rating hit in its first year, and a second season aired in early 2011. The show is currently airing its third season and filming its fourth.
Michele, along with Samantha and Sabrina, has co written a real estate novel for Harper Collins, titled HOT PROPERTY. It is due out in September 2011.