48. Joseph Mottola

Joseph Mottola has spent the past 35 years in the housing industry, both public and private, but there have been few times that the marketplace that is his lifeblood has been so shaky. Still, a buyer’s market is on the horizon, once the subprime lending crisis resolves and interest rates get as low as they’ll go (and they can’t get much lower). As the CEO of the 23,000-member Long Island Board of Realtors (LIBOR), Motolla leads the largest local realtor association in the country, which is poised to take advantage of the inevitable housing rebound. To keep himself busy when not brokering deals, he is also the CEO of the for-profit LIBOR subsidiary Multiple Listing Service of Long Island, the sixth largest MLS in the country, which encompasses more than 2,650 cooperating real estate offices.