Hard work now paying off for broker, Anne DeMarzo: Anne DeMarzo, founder & president, DeMarzo Realty.

Elghanayan, Roth, Sopher, Kalimian, DeMarzo. Hearing her name alongside those of some of the most established New York City real estate developers and investors still comes as a surprise to Anne DeMarzo, president and founder of her eponymous firm.

Yet look behind the headlines of some of the city's most fascinating real estate deals, and DeMarzo's name is often listed as a key player in the high stakes competition of Manhattan property investment.

Her talent and fortitude earned DeMarzo a place in one of the toughest negotiating arenas in the world as she worked behind the scene on deals that ultimately enabled developers to bag coveted sites upon which to build.

Some of her deals were years in the making as she assembled packages of old parking lots, garages and even former stables. She was among the pioneers who began selling Hudson Yards properties before the Hudson Yards designation even existed and became one of only a handful of city brokers who knew just what sites were available and how much they could be bought for. Remarkably, she helped visionary developers such as Rockrose and Related secure land that today fetches upwards of $300 psf for as little as $50 psf.

The one-time high school science teacher who discovered she had more of a knack for land assemblage and asset value analysis than Bunsen burners and periodic tables, said her ascent to the highest echelons of real estate brokerage was more serendipity than plan. A chance meeting with car park magnet, Hank Sopher, in a Manhattan coffee shop in the late seventies set off a chain of events that would lead DeMarzo to conquer the city's notorious real estate market.

Sopher, who then owned JI Sopher & Co. Real Estate, one of the biggest firms of the day, gave DeMarzo his card and told her she could park for free in his garage on the corner of 54th Street and 2nd Avenue--he also happened to own the Quik Park parking empire--and gave her a job renting apartments.

For the next seven years, DeMarzo pounded the streets and secured her firm's Top Broker title renting apartments from $5,000 to $50,000 a month before switching to MLBKaye International Realty to learn how to sell investment property.

It wasn't the best of times to be starting a new career--just after the stock market crash and before real estate tax reforms--but DeMarzo still managed to sell 10 buildings in her first year. She sold the penthouse at Vornado's 40-story luxury Park Laurel at 15 West 63rd Street for $2,200 a foot from a blue print in 2000 and sold townhouses to real estate developers for $8 million

"If you have a good memory, know your inventory and can match your customers with what they want, or need, or like, you will always do well," said DeMarzo, who went from earning $9,000 a year as a teacher to making $70,000 in that first year at Sopher to hundreds of thousands of dollars selling buildings.

Her success at MLBKaye prompted DeMarzo to venture out on her own in 1989. Despite once again demonstrating deplorable timing--the effects of the 1987 stock market crash were still reverberating throughout the market--DeMarzo did well by returning to her roots and hiring several agents to rent apartments in the city while continuing to keep her hand in selling investment property.

Disaster struck though in 1988 when she was seriously injured in a horse riding accident and was confined to bed for many months during a long and arduous recovery. However, the resilient broker soon realized she could continue to pull down the big deals from the comfort of her four poster and she took the radical step of downsizing her firm to focus on investment sales with a new partner, Howie Greenberg.

While she'd always enjoyed the creativity of dealing with site assemblages, DeMarzo found herself catering to a niche market buying and selling parking lots and sites. She explained, "We became experts dealing with the parking operators and developers. We would find parking lots and sell them to developers. They would build their building and then we would lease the new garages to the parking operator. Not many people deal with parking garage brokers, but we deal with every major operator in the city; Central, Imperial, Quik Park."

In the 1990s, DeMarzo found herself in a prime position to leverage her talents to help developers who had quietly begun buying land on the city's west side, when the rezoning of the area for mixed use and residential use was still just a vague plan.

"Parking lots in the area became hot properties in the expectation that this zoning change would happen, and developers really moved to snap them up," recalled Demarzo.

As an example of the escalating cost of the land as the area's popularity and market demand increased, DeMarzo cited the very first parking lot she sold in 1988 to Abi Kalimian who paid $1.3 million for the site at 37th and 9th Avenues. In 1999, DeMarzo re-sold the site for Kalimian to the Dermot Company which paid $12 million and ultimately built a rental building there which they sold to Equity Residential for $70 million two years ago. As a little bonus, DeMarzo leased the parking garage underneath the tower to Empire. "I love dealing with developers," said DeMarzo. "When I did rentals, I saw every building in the city and I learned who owned what so that when I saw a site, I would know which developer would be interested in it based on what kind of buildings they built."

DeMarzo is currently being kept busy by the boom in boutique hotel development. Earlier this year, she sold a package of 15 ICON parking sites for over $200 million to developers, investors and parking operators who are utilizing them in a combination of ways, although boutique hotels are well-suited to those smaller sites not zoned for residential development.

She just sold a $50 million package of residential apartments in a deal that came to her via a visit to her dentist. She explained, "My dentist's family wanted someone quiet and professional who could handle an off market sale. Professional insight and trustworthiness are very important to families looking to sell properties and my 20 years experience enabled me to match the properties with a buyer quickly and quietly and achieve a 3% cap rate."

She's also currently marketing a residential high rise for $80 million and a package of five garages in Washington Heights as well as a Request for Proposals for a 500-car parking garage to be built in Jamaica, Queens, and the Clarett Group's 200 West End Avenue development parking. "People often ask me how I am so calm," said DeMarzo. "I think what I do is very stressful, but it's also very interesting. There's always something new to work on and you never know what's coming next. The telephone rings constantly with people asking if I know what a garage on 2nd Avenue is worth, or a hotel broker quizzing me about leasing a 500-car garage. I do eight things at once--I have three computers going at once--but that's why I like it.

"I've worked since I was 13 years old hemming dresses in a dress store. I waitressed at an ice cream parlor and waitressed my way through college.

"But it wasn't about being financially successful, my father taught me to be the best I could be at whatever I was doing, so I have strived me whole life to do just that."