“My mind doesn’t stop thinking,” the 29-year-old model and real estate entrepreneur Jodie Fanelli said last month, driving in her Porsche SUV to Bensonhurst. “I could wake up in the middle of the night and I come up with crazy things that I’m, like, I have to write it down right away, and I want to try and pursue it.”

“The first business we were ever in together,” her identical twin, Diane, said, “we sold candy at recess.”

“We were 10 years old,” Jodie said.

It was raining, and the sisters were both wearing cream-colored jackets over gray Victoria’s Secret turtleneck dresses, with big brown boots and reddish-brown nail polish on their long hands. “Airheads, we used to have the really big ones, and then those big jawbreakers, that you would suck on forever? Now, thinking back on that, that’s the most germ-infected candy ever,” Diane said. “Especially when you’re in school, and you’re touching everything and you take it out. We would come home with like $100 a day.”

They were on their way to talk with a Brooklyn real estate broker about their new Web site, Tri-State Property Exchange, which they imagine will be a matchmaker for people who want to sell in New Jersey before buying in New York, and vice versa. Connecticut is included, too.

“Say goodbye to brokers,” Crain’s wrote in a flattering item announcing the site.

Jodie got the idea when she and her husband—Salvatore Strazzullo, a lawyer the Post called “a cross between a bulldog and Chihuahua” back when he was working on the Oscar De La Hoya drag-photos lawsuit—were trying to sell their $2.3 million house in Colts Neck, N.J. “It was beautiful, but we hated it,” she explained. “I just said to myself, ‘I wish I could try to connect with a family out in Manhattan.’ And it just turned out that I never found a site I could use.”

It started raining really hard. “It’s not an actual exchange because you’re not going to just hand over the keys. It might be for different amounts, so there’s obviously going to have to be money exchanged,” Diane said. “We’re trying to connect the people.”

 

WEIRD TIMES CREATE WEIRD NEW ideas. And there’s something about New York City real estate right now that the entrepreneurial imagination apparently finds very appealing: Last month, emails to The Observer promoted a $27-per-person continental breakfast and seminar with National Association of Realtors ex-president Dick Gaylord; an online vacation-home-rental marketplace; and The Pre-Foreclosure Real Estate Handbook, which teaches a formula for making money from foreclosed realty.

“For me, part of the fun was the independence that it offered,” said Roger Erickson, the megastar Sotheby’s broker who got into real estate when a friend sent him a get-rich-quick real estate investment book. “And the promise of being able to earn substantial income based on one’s own ability, not based on a boss’ decision to give you a raise.”

The Fanelli sisters are trying to make their idea work. In Bensonhurst, they pitched the Web site to Re/Max broker Larry Cricchio, a family friend, in a back conference room. They wanted his office’s listings on their site. “How do you get the listings on?” he asked.

“Well,” Jodie said, “we’re approaching brokers at agencies.”

“From a reality point of view,” he said later, “how often will you match the right person that wants to move to the right area?”

“I think you have a better chance because it’s only the tristate area,” Jodie said.

“So how are you guys going to make money out of this?”

“Once it’s up and running, it’s a $25 one-time fee,” Diane said. Mr. Cricchio was impressed.

“You have to start with the people you know,” Jodie said in the car on the way home, “and slowly work outside that circle.”

 

THE SISTERS GREW UP on Richmond Avenue in Staten Island, in a house next to the topsoil business owned by their family, which later did local development. “Everyone had that neighborhood feel, playing on the block, they were best friends with their neighbors’ kids. We didn’t have that, we were by businesses. So come 6 o’clock, there was no one around,” Diane said. “We never thought it wasn’t normal.”

“We had each other. So we didn’t need anyone,” Jodie said.

“We were nerds, nerdy kids,” Diane said. “It took us a while to really develop.”

“We started modeling in high school, and the girls started getting jealous,” Jodie said.

“Our senior year, we were in Your Prom magazine, and all the girls were looking for their prom dresses, and they saw us,” Diane said, “and we never told anyone we were in it. So that started a big rift with all the girls.”

They’ve been featured by Maxim twice and on Gossip Girl as extras. Ed Westwick reportedly flirted with them. After playing ring girls in The Wrestler, they were hired for the Catherine Zeta-Jones film The Rebound. This time their costumes were skimpier.

“We looked at ourselves in the mirror and were like, ‘There is no way in hell I’m going out there in front of 500 extras,’ the majority of them being men,” Jodie said.

“It’s not us,” Diane said. “We have brains, we’re businesswomen, and we love to be able to do both. And we have found a way to do both without one interfering with the other, or doing something that’s not classy.

“This was really raunchy,” Jodie said. “So then I found a woman and we just poured our hearts out to her, and said, ‘We can’t do this. We just don’t feel comfortable.’ Ten minutes later she goes, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you. I’m Catherine’s speech coach.’”

“We were like, ‘Oh shit,’” Diane said. “‘Just let them know the twins left the building.’”

As of this week, a month after their site’s launch, it has more than a dozen listings in Queens, but none in Brooklyn and only two in Manhattan. “We understand,” Jodie said, “it’s going to take a few months to build this thing up.”

“Once we get this up and running, it’s not going to take up too much of our time, and we can focus on other things, and just keep an eye on this. Because we have other ideas, different things we want to get into,” Diane said. “We’re into health food and stuff. And we’re going to start baking, trying different healthy snacks to possibly market.”

mabelson@observer.com

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