Albany, NY Agent Brian Brosen Is All Hat and All Heart With 3 Adopted Kids

Brian Brosen wears a cowboy hat. It’s a signature look for this top-producing associate broker in New York state’s Capital Region, where a baseball hat or ski cap are more common. 

“The hat has opened up so many doors, started so many conversations and gotten me ‘invited’ to the table, but I still need to earn the business with what I know and with what I provide to my clients,’’ said the Albany-Schenectady-Troy-based agent.

Brosen is not only all hat, but he’s all heart, all business, and all in. Alongside his partner of 20 years, Reggie Monroe, Brosen operates The Capital Team, which is comprised of 11 real estate agents who do it all — listings, paperwork, coaching, motivating and serving their clients. Brosen and Monroe have built a life of volunteerism, charity work and participating in their Christian faith — all while selling more than $100 million in real estate. 

Brosen and Monroe Have Adopted 3 Children With Special Needs

On top of all this, the couple became foster parents before eventually adopting three children with special needs. Their older son and daughter, now in their 20s, have graduated from school and are exploring work opportunities. Their youngest son, 13, is still in school, meaning lots of early mornings and homework sessions for Brosen, who is also the family cook. Brosen’s popular Facebook page often features photos of what he’s making his tribe for dinner, with twilight shots by the backyard pool of what Brosen calls the family’s tiki hut.

“In upstate New York, gay guys wearing cowboy hats, raising kids, being born again and calling Christ your savior and volunteering to help make a difference in the community — all the while loving a good cocktail — are not as common as one would suspect,’’ Brosen says in his characteristically good-humored way. 

By 2018, Brosen was already a fixture in the Albany area real estate market when he made the leap to eXp. It was an event that landed Brosen and Monroe on the cover of REAL Producers, a real estate industry magazine out of Albany.

“Brian and Reggie have built their reputation through hard work and determination. Not only are they partners in business, but also in life,’’  said Michael Baker, publisher of REAL Producers, adding: “They not only run a quality real estate brokerage, but give back to their community as much as they can, supporting different causes and charities through the years.’’

Brosen Got His Start in the Restaurant Business

Brosen, one of five kids from Chatham, NY, took a wild road to real estate stardom. He studied social work in college before turning to culinary arts. He managed restaurant franchises (Taco Bell, Arby’s) before the 100-hour weeks proved too demanding. From there he scaled back to running a Ben & Jerry’s store in Albany and then an LGBTQ center in Albany.

With kids at home and the need for a flexible work schedule, it was Monroe — with a full-time job at the New York State tax department — who identified a natural-born salesman in Brosen and nudged him to real estate. In 2004, Brosen signed on with a big brokerage in upstate New York and over the next 12 years, Brosen proved Monroe very right. He was a natural, and such a big producer that he finally needed to strike out on his own.

“Reggie and I were in church in November of 2017, and the pastor was speaking about ‘stepping out in faith.’  I looked over to Reggie, whispered, ‘We are leaving.’ He said, ‘I know’ back to me, and we continued on with the church service. I knew, at that point, I needed to go out on my own.’’

Brosen Wanted to Start His Own Firm. Then eXp Appeared.

Intent on establishing his own firm, Brosen and Monroe mapped out a strategy. They created a website and rented office space in downtown Schenectady in anticipation of the change. Then Monroe learned about a new online real estate brokerage called eXp Realty. Monroe liked what he learned and told Brosen to watch a video.

Within weeks, Brosen knew he had made the right call. 

“The culture of eXp is a breath of fresh air. I feel like the strings were cut off of me,’’ Brosen said.

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Starting his own firm would have meant high insurance and other carrying costs. With eXp, that is taken care of, and more. 

“What I love most is the collaboration. That would not have been my first answer when I joined, but it has become that. I value being in a company where I have such access to so many people willing to help, share and figure it out. Being such a large company, eXp has agents all over not directly competing with me, and it allows people to more freely share info and ideas,’’ Brosen said.

“We Can Do This Together. I Won’t Leave You”

Brosen remains an agent committed to humanity and doing the right thing. You won’t catch him gushing about a million-dollar listing. 

“Around 2007, we were contacted by a woman who desperately needed help. She had an abysmally small budget to work with, and the few agents she spoke with had pretty much ignored her due to it. When we started speaking in-depth, I learned she was trying to escape a bad domestic violence situation,’’ Brosen recalled.

Where other agents did not see enough money to be made, Brosen and Monroe rolled up their sleeves and went all in. He found her a seasonal camp on a small lake for $70,000. He walked her through an FHA 203k rehab loan, money used to remodel the camp into a four-season home.

“We managed to assist her in getting a safe space in which to raise her son. She stayed in that home until this past year, when she called me to list and sell it, which I did. To this day, I am honored to have helped her get some stability in her world, with that home. She trusted me when I said to her as we stood outside that little camp: ‘You can do this, we will do it together, and I won’t leave you.’’’