Brokerage behemoths
Prudential Douglas Elliman pulled away from the rest of the pack in the past year, solidifying its position as Manhattan's biggest residential firm during a period in which the largest dozen brokerages continued to see moderate growth.
In an annual survey of top firms in the city, The Real Deal found Elliman's ranks grew nearly 13 percent between this April and last April, to 1,509 Manhattan agents. Archrival firm the Corcoran Group grew by more than 5 percent, to 925 agents, finishing in second place in terms of its workforce.
Brown Harris Stevens -- which, along with Sotheby's and Stribling, sold the priciest properties on average -- grew more than 16 percent, the fastest expansion rate of any firm, though the tony firm is nearly five times as small as Elliman.
While only two firms on the list saw their agent totals drop -- Bellmarc and Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy -- there was an overall slower rate of growth than in previous years, a result of the residential market cooling off despite the recent uptick. The 10 biggest firms collectively grew around 8 percent in the last year, compared with 23 percent between April 2005 and April 2006, which was partly during the boom.
New to the list this year was Bond New York, impressively entering as the sixth-biggest brokerage. Still, showing its traditional focus on rentals. Century 21 New York Metro, a firm cobbled together from brokerages including Century 21 Kevin B. Brown & Associates and Dwelling Quest, made the list for the first time at number 10.
Data was collected in mid-April, and The Real Deal looked at a host of other stats.
The total number of listings was down at almost all firms, which may mean that firms are doing less business or that inventory is flying off the shelves more quickly because of the recent market surge. Warburg, Stribling and Halstead all showed increases in their number of exclusives, though. Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy saw its exclusives drop nearly 40 percent compared with the year before, more than any other firm, and Bellmarc's listings dropped 25.5 percent.
With a median listing price of $2.7 million, Sotheby's had the most expensive properties for sale -- that figure was up 36 percent from last year and $500,000 higher than the closest competitor, Brown Harris Stevens. Citi Habitats, the third-largest firm by number of agents, had the lowest median listing price at $609,500.
Showing that high-priced listings are not just the province of only a few powerbrokers today, there were 78 brokers at the top firms who had a listing worth more than $10 million. More than 245 brokers had a listing worth more than $4 million, up from 214 last year.
The Real Deal gathered data from the firms' Web sites and the OLR listing portal, one of the main systems that brokers use to access the Real Estate Board of New York's database of property listings. The survey, which was expanded to include a dozen firms, up from 10 firms last year, included Manhattan-based agents and their listings in Manhattan. It included only listings because of the difficulty in compiling data for closed sales and sales in contract. All listings data was culled from the OLR portal in an attempt to eliminate open listings from the survey results. The only exceptions were the number of agents at each firm and the list of the priciest properties on the market, which also were obtained through company Web sites
