Town forms strategic alliance with London brokerage Chestertons

London’s calling. Town Residential [TRDataCustom] has struck up an international partnership with Chestertons, a London-based real estate brokerage with connections to the Middle East market, the firms said.

The deal, the latest in a series of commission-sharing international “strategic alliances” rolled out by the big Manhattan brokerages, is designed to give Town’s listings exposure in the European and Middle East markets. In return, it will market Chestertons’ properties to an American audience.

Chestertons is one of the U.K.’s oldest firms, dating back to 1805, and is majority owned by Mercantile Group, an investment firm led by Libya-born investor Salah Mussa. The company has 32 fully-owned offices in the U.K. and three in the Middle East — in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Qatar — but has an international presence of 70 offices, through franchises and joint venture agreements, it said.

Neville Page, Chestertons’ director of international, said the firm had been trying to make a push into the U.S. for several years.

“Recent analysis of our website reinforced this by revealing that 29 percent of international visitors came from the U.S.,” he said.

Town CEO Andrew Heiberger noted that the deal is the second such partnership for his company, which already has an alliance with Miami-based Fortune International Group dating back to 2015.

Other New York firms have been following similar strategies. For its part, Douglas Elliman has a relationship with Knight Frank Residential, a global brokerage headquartered in London. The Corcoran Group also has a relationship with Monaco-based John Taylor. It remains to be seen whether those alliances have actually resulted in an increase in sales, The Real Deal reported last year.