Helmsley Spear is America’s oldest continuously operating real estate company and has been a leader in commercial real estate since 1866, evolving from an appraisal company to a full-service firm providing highly professional performance and bottom line profitability for its clients. Originally founded as L.B. Goodale, the company underwent three ownership changes with new partners added in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

In 2007, an investment group led by Kent M. Swig purchased the firm and began a rebranding and redevelopment of the Helmsley Spear brand name and company operations, after the firm had declined in stature over the years following the death of Harry Helmsley in 1997.

Founded by Kent Swig in 1994, Swig Equities, LLC is a full service real estate development, investment and management company with a proven track record in the development of over $3 billion of residential and commercial properties, as well as operating companies. Swig Equities provides logistical and operating support to Helmsley Spear.

Originally founded as L.B. Goodale in 1866, the company underwent three ownership changes, with new partners added during the first two decades within the twentieth century. In 1925, at the age of sixteen, Harry Helmsley graduated from Evander Childs High School in the Bronx and joined Helmsley Spear, then known as Dwight, Voorhis & Perry. He quickly advanced from a mailroom clerk to a rent collector in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen district for the firm, which specialized in leasing and managing buildings in low-rent neighborhoods. Around the time of the Great Depression, Helmsley began managing prime foreclosed properties on behalf of various banks, persuading them that these investments were sound. The firm benefited enormously from Helmsley’s talents, and by 1938, he had risen to the rank of partner, prompting the firm to be renamed Dwight, Voorhis & Helmsley.

A turning point for the firm occurred in 1938 when Helmsley assumed ownership of his first property — a ten-story office building on East 23rd Street that was scheduled for foreclosure. Foreseeing a postwar boom in the 1940s, Helmsley began to seek out bargain properties located close to major commuter terminals. While he lacked the cash necessary to purchase properties outright, Helmsley discovered that by signing away his five percent commission and offering his real estate knowledge and experience, he could retain partial ownership in real estate properties. In 1949, Harry Helmsley partnered with Lawrence Wien, a highly successful real estate lawyer who had become an expert at the tax and legal strategies of buying and selling properties. Through this partnership, Wien and his partners secured partial ownership in exchange for funding the acquisition of Helmsley-identified projects. Throughout the next 30 years, Wien and Helmsley created nearly 100 such partnerships, including the 1961 sale and leaseback of the Empire State Building.

This funding enabled the firm to engage in an active period of expansion, purchasing both individual buildings as well as entire portfolios. In 1955, following the departure of Dwight and Voorhis (the two former partners in the firm), Mr. Helmsley acquired business competitor Spear & Company, and renamed the firm to Helmsley Spear. Helmsley later acquired Charles F. Noyes Company, expanding the firm's portfolio in Lower Manhattan under a new and separate company called Helmsley Noyes. His purchase of Brown Harris Stevens in 1961 added rental and cooperative apartment sales and management to the firm’s scope of services. When coupled with nearly nine million square feet of office space and more than 5,000 apartments, Helmsley Spear grew to become one of the largest real estate management companies in the country.