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Debrah Lee Charatan | Principal

Debrah-Lee-Charatan-BCB-Property-Management

Debrah Lee Charatan serves as president of BCB Property Management Inc., a full-service multifamily and mixed-use real estate firmin New York City.

As founder, principal and president of BCB Property Management Inc., Debrah Lee Charatan looks for multifamily and mixed-use properties with considerable potential for long-term returns on investment. Since 2012, she and the team at BCB have acquired over 1.6 million square feet of real estate in New York and beyond, amounting to 100+ buildings and 1,800 apartments.

Firmly entrenched in the world of real estate for the past four decades, Debrah Lee Charatan brings a wealth of expertise in, and experience with, commercial real estate sales to her work at BCB. Charatan is widely recognized as a pioneer in her field for bringing her entrepreneurial approach to every real estate venture.

Debrah Lee Charatan opened BCB after many years as president of Debrah Lee Charatan Realty Inc. which opened in 1993, and, prior to that, Bach Realty Inc., an all-female firm that she founded in 1980. The two highly successful brokerage firms, based in the greater New York area, earned Charatan considerable accolades and honors for her savviness as a real estate veteran and entrepreneur. At both of these businesses, Debrah forged enduring relationships with some of the city’s top financial institutions and earned a reputation for smart decision-making and consistent investments in income-generating properties.

Debrah Lee Charatan is a strong advocate for women in business and female entrepreneurs, both nationally and internationally. She has been named Entrepreneurial Woman of the Year by Women Business Owners of New York and Outstanding Working Woman by Glamour magazine. She was inducted into the YWCA Academy of Working Achievers, and has also been featured in dozens of national media outlets, including The CBS Morning News, Fortune, Inc., USA Today, Cosmopolitan, BAZAAR and Forbes.

A prolific writer and instructor, Debrah Lee Charatan has authored numerous articles for the New York Law Journal, Real Estate Weekly and Real Estate Forum, and more recently, VentureBeat, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post, and CFO.com. Prior to opening BCB Property Management Inc., she taught courses on commercial real estate at New York University and Queens College, and lectured at Columbia Business School, Baruch College and other such institutions.

Debrah Lee Charatan is known not just for her success in real estate, but also for her contributions to the community, especially in New York City. She gives her time, energy and resources to a wide range of charitable organizations. For the past 25 years, Charatan has channeled much of this philanthropy through the Charatan/Holm Family Foundation, which supports arts, cultural, medical and other humanitarian causes.

A longtime supporter of Selfhelp Community Services Foundation, Debrah Lee Charatan helps raise and manage essential funding and serves as vice chair of the board of trustees. The organization is dedicated to maintaining the independence and dignity of seniors and at-risk populations through a spectrum of housing, home health care, and social services. Selfhelp was founded in 1936 to help those fleeing Nazi Germany maintain their independence and dignity as they struggled to forge new lives in America.

As a child of holocaust survivors, Debrah Lee Charatan is dedicated not only to the work of Selfhelp, but also to a number of Jewish organizations including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which she supported with a significant gift to the David and Fela Shapell Family Collections, Conservation and Research Center. Charatan also supports the Jewish Partisans Educational Foundation, which preserves and promotes the memory of Eastern European Jews who fought against Nazi occupation during World War II.

Charatan serves on the Women’s Leadership Council of the Lincoln Center Corporate Fund and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Real Estate Council. She has also contributed to the Jewish Museum and the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation.

Debrah Lee Charatan was born and raised in New York City, and holds a B.S. from Baruch College. For more information, read Charatan’s real estate and philanthropy blog posts, and connect with her on LinkedIn and Twitter.