It's not quite Gracie Mansion, but it sure is close (geographically, anyway). This "fabulous" prewar co-op at Gracie Square, overlooking nearby Carl Schurz Park, is certainly mansion-esque, thanks to its large entertaining rooms - including a living room and a den (each with its own wood-burning fireplace), a formal dining room and an updated eat-in kitchen. Plus, each of the four bedrooms can be considered a master bedroom, and that's not counting the maid's room. Overall, the apartment - in "pristine condition" and on a high floor of a full-service building - seems like it's fit for a king, or at the very least, a mayor.

Agents: Bonnie Chajet and Ronnie Lane, Warburg Realty, (212) 439-4540 and (212) 439-4541.

By Pranay Gupte

Bonnie Chajet, a senior vice president at Warburg Realty Partnership, has a formidable Rolodex. That, in a city of networkers and connectors, may not be saying much. But here's what makes Ms. Chajet's collection of contacts legendary in New York, where legends are hard-won: She knows them all, several thousand of them, and has personal and professional relationships with them.

"It's through the connections, the people you know and who know you, that you get the best properties on the market," Ms. Chajet said. "In the real estate business, it ultimately comes down to trust and integrity."

Those characteristics have been the hallmark of her career. She and her partner at Warburg, Ronnie Lane, are celebrating 30 years in the business. In fact, theirs has been the longest running and most successful real estate partnership in New York. Their careers are case studies of how to execute complicated residential property deals in record time, and to the satisfaction of seller and buyer alike.

And it has made them into models for a new generation of real estate brokers - which includes one of Ms. Chajet's two daughters, Lisa, who's also at Warburg.

"In this business, the most important thing is your reputation," the elder Ms. Chajet said. "Unless you build that reputation, you're not going to be successful. And you build that reputation deal by deal, relationship by relationship."

In her early years in real estate, she built her reputation door by door. She would walk up and down the avenues of the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side in Manhattan, befriending doormen. They became invaluable sources of information about apartments that were about to go on the market. Once, when she and her husband Clive - who's well-known in his own right as a creator of corporate and brand identities - were strolling down Park Avenue, so many doormen waved to her that Mr. Chajet asked his wife if there was anyone in Manhattan who didn't know her.

Ms. Chajet's efforts to cultivate sources such as doormen yielded dividends early in her career. She was able to obtain a 10-room Park Avenue apartment for a customer in the mid-1970s for $78,000. A couple of years ago, he sold that property for $3.5 million (although not through Ms. Chajet).

Until recently, Ms. Chajet and Ms. Lane made between 40 and 50 deals a year. In 2003, they undertook 62 transactions, with prices generally ranging between $2 million to $4 million. But residential real estate values - particularly on Manhattan's Upper East and West Sides - have skyrocketed recently to the point where the average price of a home is more than $1 million, and residential property is fetching more than $800 a square foot.

(The value of all property in New York is $616 billion, according to the city's Department of Finance. Jonathan Miller, head of Miller Samuel, a top real estate appraisal firm, said yesterday that the value of residential property transactions in Manhattan in 2004 was more than $10 billion.)

"The market value of apartments has gone up so much that we do fewer deals now, perhaps around 20 a year," Ms. Chajet said.

According to standard real estate literature, market value is generally defined as the price a willing buyer would pay a willing seller for a property in its present condition, with neither buyer nor seller under pressure to act due to such issues as job transfers, the death of a family member, or divorce. A market-value sale also is known as an arm's length transaction.

Several factors such as location and amenities can affect a residential property's market value, Ms. Chajet said. But the law of supply and demand is ineluctable. "There's always a short supply of quality products," she said.

That means she and Ms. Lane - who are among eight partners at Warburg, a 109-year-old company headed by Frederick Warburg Peters - must continuously be on the lookout for properties that may come on the market. One measure of her success in winning clients' loyalty is that Ms. Chajet has sold apartments for three generations of 10 families.

"I find it very challenging to find the right places," Ms. Chajet said. "And I get enormous satisfaction from matching sellers and buyers. Fortunately, I no longer have to walk door to door to find available places. I have the access now that I didn't 30 years ago. Technology - computers - has made the job somewhat easier."

Easier perhaps, but no less complicated than when Ms. Chajet got into the business in 1975. Previously she had worked as a personnel manager with J. Walter Thompson, the advertising company. (It was acquired in 1987 by WPP, the communications conglomerate.) She had two young daughters, Lisa and Lori, and naturally wanted to devote more time to raising them. She met Ronnie Lane by coincidence during a summer break; Ms. Lane, who had two young sons - Craig and Drew - was, like Ms. Chajet, studying for a real estate licensing exam.

Both women hit it off, Ms. Chajet said, and went to work at Lansco, a commercial brokerage. But they decided to move into residential properties because, as Ms. Chajet put it, "We each had young children, and residential real estate was a way to not do it full time and split the load."

Ms. Lane has been famously quoted as saying of their partnership: "We're both mildly aggressive and have similar-type lifestyles, and we both are motivated to the same degree."

That motivation and assertiveness are needed because closing deals is a complicated business. "You need to sell a property twice - once to the buyer, and again to the co-op board, whose members need to be convinced about the credentials of that buyer," Ms. Chajet said. "And how do I assess a person? Well, call it my 'real estate gene.' "

But even before due diligence about a buyer's credentials is undertaken, the property needs to be advertised and marketed. Under the rules of the Real Estate Board of New York, a broker must make information available about a property he's been asked to sell to other brokers within 72 hours. This is usually done through the Internet.

Leni May and her husband, Peter W. May, who has made a fortune buying and selling companies like Snapple, moved late last year from a duplex apartment with lots of space and not much of a view, at 895 Park Avenue, to a much smaller apartment with a wonderful view in the San Remo, on Central Park West.

The couple had lived happily for some two decades on the Upper East Side and had never seriously contemplated leaving, according to Mrs. May. The story of how they came to live on the Upper West Side begins in an unlikely place: the cafe in the Fairway Market, on Broadway and West 74th Street, where the Mays had gone one morning in November 2002 to have brunch with some old friends. After brunch, their friends mentioned that they were going to the San Remo, between 74th and 75th Streets, to look at an apartment that had belonged to an uncle of theirs who had died, and that they were arranging to sell for his estate. It was a beautiful fall day, Mrs. May recalled recently, and she and her husband went along for the walk. The view from the 15th-floor apartment, Mrs. May said, was breathtaking, and on the spot her husband said that they should buy the place.

The idea, she recalled, was an unsettling one for someone with roots as deep as theirs on the other side of the park and she didn't take it too seriously, figuring that her husband would soon forget about it.
But it turned out that she was the one who couldn't get the view off her mind. After a walk across the park, they were back in their Park Avenue apartment, when suddenly Mrs. May found herself announcing, "I could do this!"

"Do what?" asked her husband.

Move to the San Remo, she said.

A few days later, the Mays called their friends and arranged to buy the apartment. Mrs. May would not say how much they paid.

Bonnie Chajet, a senior vice president at Warburg Realty, who had been contracted to sell the unit, said it was being offered for $6.9 million.

A complete renovation of the apartment was finished late last year and the Mays, who are both 62, moved in.

Mr. May is the president of the Triarc Companies, which bought Snapple from Quaker Oats for $300 million in 1997 and sold it three years later to Cadbury Schweppes for $1.45 billion.

In the end, Mrs. May has adjusted swimmingly to her new environment. "It's like we're almost newlyweds again," she said. "It's new and it's an adventure. We've lived in the city forever. We started out at Peter Cooper Village. We raised our kids here and it's just taking advantage of another part of New York that's so beautiful and vibrant and fun. I'm just loving it."

As their move approached, the Mays put their Park Avenue apartment on the market, listing it for $12.65 million with Ms. Chajet and her partner, Ronnie Lane, who is also a senior vice president for Warburg.
That apartment was sold in the first week of January, to Arthur B. Newman, 61, a senior managing director of the Blackstone Group, and his wife, Eileen.

While the Mays traded space for views, the Newmans did the opposite. They will be moving, once renovations are done, from a smaller co-op apartment with Central Park views at 860 Fifth Avenue, which is now on the market for $5.9 million, listed with Ms. Chajet and Ms. Lane.