“Ranks shift as newcomer firms continue hiring spree”
In the world of Manhattan boutique firms, a new company is king.
For the first time since The Real Deal started ranking boutique firms in 2009, the seven-year-old brokerage Core knocked the venerable Upper East Side brokerage Leslie J. Garfield & Co. from its continuous perch atop the firms with the highest dollar volume of listings.
Collectively, the 358 agents working at the top dozen boutique firms had 271 Manhattan residential properties listed for sale, totaling nearly $874 million, when TRD collected the data from listing provider Online Residential in early May. That’s up from last year, when the top dozen firms had 276 agents who shared 231 listings worth a total $690.4 million.
“The size of the company doesn’t matter,” Core CEO Shaun Osher said of his firm. “It’s actually the power that we have in our listings.”
Also new to the list is MNS, the firm created out of a 2009 merger between the Real Estate Group New York and the Developers Group.
While the bulk of its Manhattan listings are concentrated in two Harlem developments — the Lenox at 380 Lenox Avenue and 2280 FDB at 2280 Frederick Douglass Boulevard — MNS has tried to broaden its focus in the last year, working with buyers and individual sellers in addition to developers, according to CEO Andrew Barrocas.
“We market a building, we [sell] it out and agents have gone back a couple years later and gotten resales in the buildings,” Barrocas said.
MNS has also gained a wider reputation by overseeing sales at the Edge, Douglaston Development’s once-stalled Williamsburg megaproject (although Brooklyn listings are not included in this ranking).
With that development nearly sold out, MNS has several buildings in the pipeline, ranging from 20 to 100 units and located in the Lower East Side, Union Square and Murray Hill, Barrocas said.
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