March 26th, 2006 12:00am

By Denis Hamill

read this article on The New York Daily News site

She was an upstate girl who came to the big city in the 1980s to
study journalism at NYU.

Today, Wendy Maitland is a fortysomething single mother of two, a
licensed psychotherapist, part-owner of two trendy Manhattan restaurants,
and one of the most successful realtors in Manhattan with $45 million
worth of property in contract so far this year, including Woody Allen's
new townhouse that exceeded the budgets of most of his films.

Now Maitland is shooting the pilot of a half-hour show for Plum TV,
standing with microphone in hand at the intersection of showbiz and real
estate as the anchor of a still-untitled half-hour real estate program.
"I was always interested in what made human beings tick," says Maitland.
"That's why I was interested in journalism and switched to psychology.
I got my M.A. in social work. The last thing I was interested in was
real estate."

Following college, Maitland married, had two kids (Emma, now 15,
and Matthew, 11), and started a psychotherapy practice in Greenwich
Village. "After I became a mother I realized that where and how people
lived was a fascinating aspect of human behavior. Where they go, where
they come from, how they live, all helps define who people are."

On Sept. 11, 2001, Maitland was living in a loft in lower Manhattan
when the twin towers fell. "The traumatized kids from Stuyvesant High
were sent over to my kids' school, so I counseled the kids who'd
watched bodies flying out of windows. They were just high school kids,
and in the middle of a normal day their whole world was just irrevocably
invaded by the most violent images imaginable."

She continued to counsel the kids for several weeks, and did a
workshop for their parents.

A single mother living in wounded downtown, she'd scheduled to put
her loft on the market on Sept. 12. "I'd paid $300,000 for it,
renovated it, and wanted to sell it," she said. "On 9/12 the broker
showed up and I was like, 'How can I even think about this now?' But
I signed the contract, sort of in a state of shock." Then the bottom
fell out of the Manhattan real estate market as terrified citizens
fled the city.

"Three months later, it sold in a bidding war," Maitland said.
"But I did most of the marketing myself. [And] I saw that downtown
needed to rebuild."

Maitland got a real estate license, reduced her therapy practice,
and in the four-plus years since 9/11 she's sold lofts, condos and
houses to movie stars, venture capitalists and developers. "I really
enjoyed finding diamonds in the rough," she said, "making them
beautiful, and moving families back into downtown Manhattan, which
had given me a life." She is now among the top 25 agents in the
1,500-strong Corcoran Group, the top real estate company in the city.

"My first big sale was for an Israeli businessman who owned a
huge space on Broadway that I rented for a bat mitzvah for my
daughter," she says. "I noticed he had some empty lofts. I asked
if I could sell them. He said he wanted $3.2 million each. I said
I could get him more. He said okay. I had a contract for $6.75
million within a month."

Maitland then invested in two hot restaurants in the Meatpacking
District called Five Nine, and Fatty Crab, but to keep perspective
amid the near-obscene wealth of the real estate world she continued
to counsel a number of Stuyvesant students, and aligned herself with
a nonprofit charity called FXB.

"FXB uses a business-model approach to pandemic poverty and AIDS
in Africa," she says. "While lower Manhattan soared out of the dust,
it was important to me to be part of something that worked village by
village in Africa, raising money. And using a business model, so that
within three years those villages will be self-sustaining in medical
services, education, jobs. I'm heading one of those villages. To
contribute please, please, please log on to www.fxb.org."

Last year a friend of a friend, a producer at Plum TV, was
looking for a successful, telegenic real estate consultant to
serve as an on-air personality for a new real estate program."

"We've been shooting around town, across the country and the
world," says Maitland. "It'll be informative about buying and
selling real estate. And will feature some of the most interesting
properties around the world." Maitland will anchor the show from
New York City. "The producers are in talks with a major network
right now," she says. "I never would have believed when I left
upstate Rhinebeck that this was what I'd be doing when I grew up."