Frederick Peters
Who
Peters is head of the midsized luxury real estate agency Warburg Realty.
Backstory
Frederick Warburg Peters has quite the pedigree: His father was C. Brooks Peters, the distinguished New York Times reporter who covered the outbreak of World War II from Berlin; his mother, Phyllis Rothschild, was the daughter of Walter Rothschild, a onetime chairman of Federated Department Stores, and Carola Warburg, an heir to the famous German-Jewish Warburg banking fortune.
Raised in New York, Peters originally planned on becoming a music theorist—he enrolled in an MFA program at CUNY in classical music composition. But in 1980—impelled by, he says, his love of floor plans—he dropped out of school and joined brokerage Albert B. Ashforth, a storied firm founded by Albert Blackhurst Ashforth in 1896. Eleven years into his brokerage career, with the Manhattan branch foundering, management informed Peters he could acquire the office or it would be sold off to the highest bidder. Peters opted to purchase it himself, splitting profits (per the terms of the buyout deal) with parent company Ashforth until 2001, when he renamed the company Ashforth Warburg Associates. In 2003, erasing all vestiges of the firm's Ashforth past, he rechristened it yet again, this time as Warburg Realty.
Of note
Over the years, Peters has grown the firm considerably, increasing its broker tally from 60 to 150. Warburg now handles transactions for upscale residences in all corners of Manhattan, and has amassed a client list that includes Jason Giambi, Jorge Posada, and Harry Macklowe. (The firm's top-producing broker, managing director Richard Steinberg, cinched the sales to Giambi and Posada.) Warburg Realty benefited from some good PR in 2004, when it became the first big-name Manhattan brokerage to open a sales office in Harlem. It received considerably worse PR in 2006, when one of its brokers went insane: She broke into a client's apartment, trashed it, peed on his mattress and defecated in his closet. FWP wisely dismissed her.
Just how long FWP will remain independent is unclear. With increasing consolidation in the Manhattan brokerage business of late, many say it's only a matter of time before a major real estate conglomerate scoops up Warburg.
Personal
Peters and his wife Alexandra have two 20-something children, Jack and Clelia. (Clelia's odd name is a nod to the character Clelia Conti in the Stendahl masterpiece The Charterhouse of Parma.) They live in Sharon, Conn., in a house they purchased for $1.775 million in 2005.
