Prudential Douglas Elliman Chairman Howard Lorber and President and CEO Dottie Herman

The city’s largest residential brokerage firm, Prudential Douglas Elliman, could drop “Prudential” from its name and leave the global network if it can’t hammer out a new franchise agreement to replace one that expires in about a year, Dottie Herman CEO of the residential firm, told The Real Deal.

Top executives at Prudential Douglas Elliman are scheduled to meet this month with a division of the Canadian conglomerate Brookfield Asset Management to discuss the future of its license agreement for the name Prudential, Herman CEO said.  [more]

From left: Frank Arends, Patty LaRocco, Terry Naini and Ginger Brokaw

Three senior vice presidents from Prudential Douglas Elliman’s 26 West 17th Street office started today at Town Residential, according to their new firm. [more]

From left: Lori Barbaria and Enzo Morabito

Prudential Douglas Elliman named the East Hampton office its top performing unit across all of Long Island and Westchester in 2011, at its annual awards ceremony yesterday.

Lori Barbaria, an agent based out of the firm’s East Hampton office took home the top individual broker honor, while the Bridgehampton-based Enzo Morabito Team claimed the top spot among the firm’s brokerage squads. The rankings were based on Gross Commission Income. [more]

Madeline Elghanayan

Madeline Hult Elghanayan, wife of TF Cornerstone Chairman Thomas Elghanayan and a 20 year veteran of the real estate industry, joined Prudential Douglas Elliman as a senior vice president two weeks ago, the firm announced. She’s working out of the 575 Madison Avenue office.

Elghanayan last worked for the Corcoran Group, which she joined 10 years ago via the Sunshine Group when it was sold to the brokerage in 2002. [more]

Condo and co-op sales (source: Prudential Douglas Elliman)

Through the housing booms and credit busts, the Manhattan residential sales market had a fairly nondescript decade ending in December 2011.

Prices across all housing stock increased about as much as one would expect they would have since 2002, and sales activity was remarkably similar in 2011 to 2002. [more]

Source: Prudential Douglas Elliman

A sharp drop in national mortgage rates coupled with a barrage of weak economic news in the fall drove down the overall average prices of property sales in both Brooklyn and Queens in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to reports from Prudential Douglas Elliman and Brown Harris Stevens, released today.

In Brooklyn, home prices overall declined largely due to a jump in the volume of sales of lower-priced co-ops. The average sales price dropped by 7.5 percent to $529,640 in the last quarter of 2011 from $572,892 in 2010, while the number of total sales increased by 6.1 percent to 1,558 from 1,468, according to Eliman’s report. Meanwhile listing inventory decreased 4.8 percent to 5,908 units from 6,203 the year-prior quarter. [more]

Jennifer Dorfmann, director of sales at Modern Spaces and L haus listing broker, and the L haus

Stahl Organization replaced the Prudential Douglas Elliman team that marketed the L haus condominium in Long Island City with Modern Spaces. Stahl revealed the switch today with the launch of the condo’s new website, but Modern Spaces’ Jennifer Dorfmann and Tonia Moore officially took over the sales effort Jan. 1.

In more than three years at the helm, Elliman sold about 60 percent of the 122 units in the L haus, located at 11-02 49th Avenue. [more]

From left: Marion Hedges and the Target in Harlem

Marion Hedges, the Prudential Douglas Elliman agent hit by a shopping cart thrown off the roof of a Harlem shopping center in October, was technically dead at the scene, the New York Post reported. Hedges was revived by a resident at New York Hospital who was shopping at Target at the time of the accident. A law enforcement source told the Post about the heroics that helped to save Hedges’ life, but said the agent “will never be the same. … She will have cognitive issues.” [more]

Landlords continue to have the upper hand when it comes to Manhattan’s residential rental market, according to fourth-quarter reports released today by brokerages Prudential Douglas Elliman and Citi Habitats. The median asking rent climbed 6.6 percent over the last year, and vacancies were filled at a near-record pace, according to Elliman, while both firms reported a sharp decline in concessions. [more]

From left, Prudential Douglas Elliman’s Dottie Herman, Halstead Property’s Greg Heym and the Corcoran Group’s Pamela Liebman The volume of Manhattan home sales declined at least 12 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, although prices continued to hold steady, according to quarterly reports issued today by the city’s largest residential real estate brokerages. Experts proffered a host of explanations for the drop in sales activity, from global economic chaos to low inventory levels to financing issues for buyers in the middle of the market. [more]