Neil B. Garfinkel

Abrams Garfinkel Margolis Bergson, LLP

Neil Garfinkel is the Managing Partner of Abrams Garfinkel Margolis Bergson, LLP (“AGMB”), a full-service law firm with offices in New York and California. Additionally, he serves as the Partner-in-Charge of the real estate and banking practices of AGMB.
Neil’s legal experience is diverse: his firm focuses on all aspects of residential and commercial real estate, banking, and lending law. Neil’s clients include national and international banks, mortgage bankers, mortgage brokers, real estate brokers, real estate developers, and purchasers and sellers of residential and commercial real estate.

Neil serves as Broker Counsel to the Real Estate Board of New York (“REBNY”), New York City’s leading real estate trade association. In addition to counseling REBNY and its members on the vast array of laws and regulations that affect the real estate brokerage community, Neil hosts the REBNY Legal Line, a daily legal hotline provided exclusively for members of REBNY.

He also authors the REBNY Legal Line Question of the Week and Fair Housing Fridays, which are distributed to all REBNY members on a weekly basis. Through his affiliation and participation with REBNY and the Long Island Board of Realtors (“LIBOR”), he is acutely aware of the many issues that face real estate brokers on a daily basis. Neil is also a member of the New York State Association of Realtors, Long Island Board of Realtors and the National Association of Realtors. Additionally, he has the SRES (Senior Real Estate Specialist) and CDEI (Certified Distance Education Instructor) designations.

n 2018, he was appointed to the New York State Board of Real Estate (the “State Board”) by Governor Andrew Cuomo. The State Board has the general authority to promulgate rules and regulations affecting real estate brokers and real estate salespersons.

Neil and AGMB serve as Counsel to the Empire State Mortgage Bankers Association and the New York Association of Mortgage Brokers. He advises his mortgage banking and mortgage broker clients on all aspects of their businesses. Additionally, Neil has traveled extensively throughout the country, providing training programs to his banking clients and he is well versed in the complex areas of federal and state licensing and lending laws. Neil is a member of the Community Mortgage Bankers Forum, the Mortgage Bankers Association of New York and National Association of Mortgage Brokers.

Neil enjoys teaching and speaking about a variety of real estate and lending topics. In particular, he spends a significant amount of time lecturing and training on topics relating to fair housing and real estate agency. He is certified by the New York Department of State as an instructor of real estate courses. He has appeared on various television and nationally syndicated radio shows, and is frequently quoted in numerous newspapers and publications such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsday, Reuters, AP, Dow Jones, Forbes.com, Bankrate.com, and CNN.com.

In 2021, Neil was named a Notable in Real Estate by Crains and a Power Lawyer by Schneps Media. He was also elected a Super Lawyer.

Neil received his Juris Doctorate from Cornell Law School and his Bachelor of Arts from the State University of Albany at New York, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.