In Los Angeles, the land of social media influence and reality television, reality stars lead among the city’s most-followed residential brokerages.
Mauricio Umansky’s The Agency is the residential brokerage with the most Instagram followers among those listed in The Real Deal’s 2024’s most active residential brokerages ranking, with a count of 507,000 followers. (TRD analyzed closed, buy- and sell-side deals in Los Angeles County recorded in the multiple listing service, off-market deals and sales under $1,000,000 were not considered. Because of the volume of transactions, sales under $1,000,000 were not counted. All firms were contacted for the ranking, though not all participated.) In terms of deal volume, though, The Agency was third in 2024, sitting behind Compass and Coldwell Banker Realty.
Jason Oppenheim’s The Oppenheim Group, of Netflix’s “Selling Sunset” fame, has 605,000 followers – but the brokerage did not make the ranking for sales in 2024.
Umansky, who has around 816,000 followers himself, founded The Agency in 2011. His firm has more than 130 offices across 13 countries. In New York City, The Agency came in second place in that city’s ranking of the brokerages with the top Instagram followers, behind Ryan Serhant’s eponymous firm.
Before founding The Agency, Umansky had been a long-time luxury residential broker at Hilton & Hyland, based in Beverly Hills, but gained prominence outside of the real estate world as the now-separated husband of Kyle Richards, of “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” fame. Umansky also had his own reality show on Netflix called “Buying Beverly Hills,” but the streaming giant canceled the program after two seasons.
After The Agency, the top Los Angeles brokerage with the most Instagram followers is Sotheby’s International Realty, with 494,000 followers on its page. That firm came in fourth place for deal volume in 2024.
Sotheby’s Southern California branch — Vista Sotheby’s International Realty — was ninth in terms of deal volume in Los Angeles last year, but was near the bottom of the social media rankings with about 6,300 Instagram followers.
As for Compass, the residential brokerage with the highest deal volume in Los Angeles last year, its 220,000 Instagram followers was good for fifth place among the most active brokerages in the city.
Compass, founded in New York City in 2013, launched its Los Angeles office two years later with 19 brokers.
Coldwell Banker, which was third last year in terms of deal volume, placed seventh on the social ranking, with 165,000 Instagram followers.
Subscribe to TRD Data to unlock this content