A longtime New York City brokerage executive is taking a step back.
Hall Willkie announced he will be stepping down as president of Brown Harris Stevens in an internal memo sent to the company on Monday, effective July 1. Willkie will start a six-year contract as a consultant with BHS residential sales.
Willkie has been with the firm for 37 years and overseen its growth from a single office into one of the city’s top residential brokerages. BHS finished fourth in The Real Deal’s most recent ranking of Manhattan brokerages after reporting $2 billion in sell-side closed sales volume in 2024.
Taking over for Willkie as co-presidents will be sales managers Kevin Kovesci and Itzy Garay, two employees who have been in the Terra Holdings ecosystem for years.
Kovesci joined BHS as a sales manager on the West Side in 2006 before moving to Halstead as a general sales manager in 2011. With the merger of Halstead and Brown Harris Stevens in 2020, Kovesci returned to his role as the West Side sales manager for BHS. He also most recently held the title of senior executive vice president.
Garay joined Halstead as the executive director of sales for the company’s Park Avenue in 2017 after working as executive vice president of sales and leasing at Town Residential. She most recently served as senior executive vice president and Upper East Side sales manager at BHS.
“We are excited to work alongside Hall and Bess as NYC co-presidents in this new chapter,” Kovesci and Garay said in a joint statement. “Hall has been and will continue to be an incredible mentor to our agents and executives, and we are fortunate to have him as a resource going forward.”
Willkie has been part of a number of transitions during his time at BHS, including its 1995 sale to Terra Holdings, the firm owned by Arthur and William Lie Zeckendorf. After running the firm for roughly two decades, Willkie oversaw Bess Freedman’s elevation to co-president in 2017 and, less than a year later, to CEO of BHS.
In 2020, BHS merged with Halstead, which had been owned by Terra Holdings since 2001, creating a mammoth new combined firm.
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