Rachel Martin (
)
She’s a Navy officer in an Afghanistan war zone moonlighting as a Manhattan real-estate power broker — but which job is more cutthroat?
Naval Reserve Lt. Commander and Prudential Douglas Elliman agent Rachel Martin, 33, was deployed to Kandahar in December for a 330-day tour.
But serving on a desert base 6,800 miles from Park Avenue wasn’t enough to make her abandon the moneyed clients she’s been cultivating for four years in the ruthless jungle of residential real estate.
So from her barb-wired perch, where she lives in a converted container in the former Taliban stronghold, Martin continues to close million-dollar deals. Her weapons of choice: a Defense Department-approved cellphone and secure voice-over-Internet communications.
Martin, who attended the Dwight School on the Upper West Side, joined the Navy in 2001 as a meteorologist/oceanography officer after graduating from SUNY-Oneonta.
After eight years of active duty, Martin signed up for the Reserve while starting a career in real estate.
Within two years, she was selling a $4.5 million, 4,000-square-foot condo in TriBeCa and a $1.4 million condo at Trump World Tower in Midtown, according to Streeteasy.com.
In December, when she was called up again and assigned as an operations officer to the Defense Management Contract Agency, she decided to continue her career as a condo warrior.
In June, Martin, with the help of a colleague, “worked the deal at 200 Riverside Boulevard while I was deployed here,” she wrote in an e-mail from Kandahar, of a $1.9 million three-bedroom, three-bathroom luxury pad at Trump Place on West 70th Street.
Her commission was about $114,000 — double the $65,000 she earns in the Reserve.
The building’s hardwood oak floors and indoor lap pool may have felt world’s away from her spartan officer’s quarters. But she was immersed in the deal, her colleague said.
“It was a challenging sale, because the third-floor property has the highway at eye level,” said Leonel Piraino, a Prudential Douglas Elliman agent who serves as Martin’s Manhattan liaison.
Over the past eight months, Martin has been in constant contact with clients and colleagues back home.
Martin, who’s scheduled to return to New York in November, is currently working with a handful of clients looking to buy in the $3 million range uptown.
Piraino said it makes him feel patriotic to assist the soldier of fortune.
“I felt so proud of Rachel for going all the way to the middle of nowhere to defend our country,” said Piraino, a native of Argentina. “It’s my honor to help her.”