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Who

The top broker at Sotheby's International Realty, Erickson has one of the city's most star-studded client lists.

Backstory

An alum of Syracuse University's communications school, Erickson spent the first part of his professional life as a record exec at CBS Records, where he promoted Julio Iglesias albums by day and partied with Andy Warhol's Factory crowd by night. When he switched over to real estate in the early '80s and joined the midsized agency William B. May, his music industry ties served as the foundation of his business: He made his first-ever apartment sale to trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, and later sold Andy Warhol's townhouse to former MTV boss Tom Freston. After spending 20 years at William B. May, in 2004 Erickson defected to Sotheby's, where he's now senior managing director. Over the course of his brokerage career he's sold upwards of half a billion dollars' worth of real estate.

Of note

Erickson has worked with a long list of music industry personalities over the years, including Bono, Madonna, and Max Weinberg. In 1994, he sold David Geffen two adjacent properties on East 64th Street and then convinced Edgar Bronfman Jr. to buy a townhouse on the very same block for $4.3 million several months later. More recently, he sold Wind-Up Records chairman Alan Meltzer's 50th floor 9,000-square-foot penthouse at One Beacon Court—billed as Manhattan's largest full-floor penthouse—to real estate mogul David Mack (son of Bill Mack) for $25 million. But it isn't just music-industry hotshots he does business with: Other clients have included Charles Schwab, Marianne Boesky, Dan Houser, Mallory Factor, Barry Kieselstein-Cord, Tatum O'Neal, Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy, and Steve Jobs, whose iPad—a $14.5 million penthouse at the San Remo—Erickson sold in 2003. But like any big broker, he has his occasional tough sells as well. Erickson put Ian Schrager's former penthouse at the Majestic on the market for $22 million in 2001; it languished for three years before selling for a comparatively meager $12.2 million in 2004.

Personal

Erickson's first wife was mega-music publicist and fellow Factory habitué Susan Blond. After 13 years of marriage, in 1998 Erickson left Blond for his 26-year-old Russian tango instructor, Irina Shpeckt. The sad part? Erickson's tango lessons had been a gift from Blond who had hoped the lessons would bring the couple closer together. Erickson has a son from his marriage to Blond, Jack. Erickson and Shpeckt live on the Upper West Side.

The look

A Ferrari owner—he tools around in a F430—Erickson often wears Ferrari-appropriate attire: black leather.