Jose Schwartzbaum June 29, 1938 March 17, 2023

Miami Beach, Florida Born in Havana Cuba, son of Abaraham and Jayasarah.

A clothing store owner since the young age of 17, and continued to be so in New York when he left Cuba in 1961. Moved to Miami in 1970 with his family, where he continued to run many successful stores. In his younger years he participated in sports and later enjoyed watching his Miami Teams play and compete.

Close to his late Brother and Sister Samuel and Julia z”l.

He was a Kind, Generous Family Man who Loved his Family and being Jewish.

Very much loved by his nieces, nephews, cousins and many good friends.

Survived by his wife Lidia, Sons Robert and Gary, his grandchildren and great-grandchild.

Burial will be held at 10am on Sunday, March 19, 2023.

Lakeside Memorial Park

“I really work toward making a profit, no matter how hard times get,” he told The Post in 1995, recalling one downturn when he cut his salary to zero to help maintain the company’s margins.

Over the course of his career, Foster witnessed prodigious changes in the way homes are bought and sold. When he began, agents maintained hardcopy records of active listings in their territory. With no lockboxes to dangle from doorknobs, they had to fetch keys before taking clients on a showing. There were no websites such as Zillow or Redfin where prospective home buyers could peruse properties on their own.

Foster said the recruitment of successful real estate agents was always at the core of his business strategy. The ideal agent, in his estimation, possessed both “empathy” and “ego.”

“If you have a lot of empathy and you don’t have ego drive,” he told the publication American Executive in 2005, “you might make a good priest, but you won’t make a good salesperson or sales manager. If you have equal quotients of empathy and ego drive, you’re a good person, but you’re aggressive and you make things happen.”

Foster grew his company’s ranks by wooing agents away from competing firms and retaining those who worked for the smaller brokerages that Long & Foster bought in the course of its expansion. One longtime Long & Foster agent, Gary Ditto, recalled that Foster at times would help haul boxes into a new hire’s office.

Long & Foster got its start in a modest, 600square-foot