J. Philip Faranda

About Phil Faranda

I founded J. Philip Real Estate in a spare bedroom in June  2005. I have grown the firm to a 40 50 65 80 associate organization and Westchester County’s premier independent brokerage. I served as 2014 President of the Hudson Gateway Multiple Listing Service aas well as a Director for the NY State Association of REALTORS and chair of the NYSAR Tech Forum.  I have personally closed between 40 and 60 transactions annually since 2007, putting me in the top 20 producers for volume out of over 7000 in my marketplace. I feel that this experience in the field helps my voice resonate with consumers, my industry colleagues, and sometimes even the media.

The Westchester Real Estate Blog was started in 2008. My commentary has attracted the attention of the mainstream media almost from the beginning;  I have appeared on ABC World News, and been a source for the New York Times, Businessweek, the Associated Press, MSNBC, The New York Post, Gannett, AOL, The Real Deal, TheStreet.com, 1010Wins.com, Smart Money, MSN Money, Time.com, and various other media outlets. I also blog regularly for the Patch.com community blogs (a division of Huffington Post) and various other platforms. I started out blogging on Active Rain, a platform geared toward industry professionals, and have been featured on their front page over 220 times. I migrated all my content to my own self hosted platform in February 2012, but I still consider the Active Rain community to be the best social network for real estate people in existence.

In June of 2012 I was among 20 agents chosen nationwide to be on Zillow.com’s Agent Advisory Board, and the following month my firm was given membership in Westchester Real Estate Inc.,  a consortium of independently owned real estate firms. While I view these accomplishments as validation, I also believe they’ll contribute to my insight on this platform. In 2013 I was a national finalist for Inman Innovator of the Year, and a 2017 selection to the Inman Influencer List.

I graduated from Villanova University in 1989 with a BA in English. While at Villanova, I got hoarse over  more basketball games than I can count, was on the rowing team for 4 years (getting hoarse as a coxswain), was a fraternity brother of Pi Kappa Alpha, and screamed some more as an orientation counselor. After graduating, I spent 7 years in sales for a publishing company before getting my real estate license in 1996. I sold real estate for 5 years and then took a break from the real world in 2000, when I spent a year bartending, nursing a rescued dog back to health from severe heartworm, and playing fantasy baseball. I then worked 5 years as a mortgage loan officer, which I still consider very valuable experience that makes me a better broker.

I  have four children, one of whom is on the spectrum for autism. Rounding out the roster is Jake, our rescued German Shepherd, and I  live in Briarcliff Manor, New York.

While the central focus of this blog is all things real estate, I take the editorial privilege of opining and sharing on a variety of matters that include the personal, the occasional self congratulatory, and the off topic. Don’t be surprised by anything that comes from my keyboard.

If you want to reach me, try my cell at 914-450-8883.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the “J” stands for Joseph. Long story, but I have always gone by my middle name.