Who

Kleier is head of the high-end real estate agency Gumley Haft Kleier, one of the most prominent boutique agencies in town.

Backstory

Pittsburgh native Kleier broke into the business working for longtime broker Phyliss Koch. After spending 17 years working for the boutique brokerage doyenne and building up her client list (in part by selling apartments to the parents of her children's classmates at Horace Mann), Kleier left Koch to start her own firm, Michele Kleier Inc. In 1993, she joined Gumley Haft to run their residential real estate group; four years later, she and her husband Ian bought the brokerage. (Gumley Haft continues to operate as a management firm with about 75 buildings and 7,000 apartments in its portfolio.) At GHK, Kleier specializes in uptown pre-wars, although she'll occasionally take a suitably luxe sub-14th Street listing.

Of note

Kleier has sold property to a slew of celebs over the past decade, including Katie Couric, Neil Diamond, Billy Joel, Richard Gere, Marvin Hamlisch, Warren Beatty, John Travolta, Al Pacino, and Malcolm middler Frankie Muniz. Now in her 60s, Kleier will most likely pass on her 40-person firm to her kids when she retires: Samantha Kleier Forbes, Sabrina Kleier Morgenstern, and Jonathan Kleier all work for the family business as does Sabrina's husband, Robert Morgenstern.

Habitat

The Kleiers live in a nine-room apartment with a private elevator at 1125 Park Avenue. (Uber-lawyer Gary Naftalis lives in the same building.) They have vacation homes in Boca Raton and Atlantic Beach. A Maltese fanatic, Kleier is rarely without one of her snow white dogs, Dolly, Roxy and Lola.

True story

After three decades in the world of high-end real estate, Kleier has more than few bizarre tales from the front lines. She says a co-op board once insisted that her client's fat dog go on a diet if he wanted to live in the building. And one of her repeat celeb clients—she won't say who, of course—has demanded to eat dinner in an apartment before deciding whether to buy it.