Joshua Balsam
Joshua Balsam is the owner of Balsam Real Estate, a full-service management and investment company located in the Bronx, New York, and in Westchester County. Led by the core value to enhance communities through real estate, the firm specializes in fix-and-flips, rebuilding distressed properties, and property management. With over a decade of experience in the industry, and as a real estate investor himself, Josh brings tremendous value to investors while improving neighborhoods, helping home sellers prosper, and giving buyers the perfect place to call home. “While it’s always exciting to make money, both as a business and for our investors, to be able to do so while putting somebody into a new home or watching the surrounding community thrive because of our contribution, there really is no more rewarding feeling,” he shares.
Josh’s skill, expertise, and a passion for his work are illustrated in nearly a dozen fix-flip and management projects across the Bronx and Hudson Valley, including the monumental undertaking of nearly 200 units in 2 distressed properties, transforming them from depressing, dilapidated buildings hemorrhaging revenue into an inviting community of happy residents—and profitable assets. He brought in new management, new staff, and improved the building and the property. In doing so, he increased the long-suffering occupancy rate from 85 percent with an epidemic of unpaid rent to nearly 100 percent with vastly improved consistency in rent collections.
“When I took over, the buildings were among the worst managed buildings in New York City, with countless violations and maintenance issues that hadn’t been addressed for a decade,” Josh says. “Now we’ve created a true neighborhood. Residents are happier, and the community and buildings feel like home.”
Josh founded Balsam Real Estate in 2016 as a hands-on service—and he takes this seriously. While he manages the myriad responsibilities as the owner of a growing company, he is involved in every aspect of the business. He monitors the details of each project, from staff to tenant work orders, rent collections, and finances, and works together with JLA Realty Advisors to maintain and build their rental portfolio. Josh and his team work closely with home sellers, personally walking them through the sales process to acquire their homes, helping many of them out of difficult situations, and then works with contractors, real estate agents, and other investors to facilitate deals, whether fix-and-flip or resale.
In keeping with the company’s overall mission to enhance communities, Balsam Real Estate’s focus on fix-flips and wholesale homes is on not only beautifying distressed—sometimes crumbling—properties, but on raising home values in line with the area. Josh has done exactly this with nearly a dozen transformations across the New York area. “Taking this home that is a blank canvass and making it a home for the right buyer is tremendously rewarding,” Josh says. “We don’t want to make it the most expensive home in the neighborhood, but a good-quality home that fits and that can enhance community.”
Even in light of his astounding success, Josh shares the credit with his sister and part-owner, Eve Balsam, whose creativity has helped revive the properties, and his mentor, John Coleman, for being a “fantastic mentor and for setting a great example in the industry.”
Joshua Balsam
Owner — Balsam Real Estate
Rye Brook, NY
Download the magazine and see Joshua's feature on page 68.