Compass, Corcoran and Douglas Elliman may dominate Manhattan residential sales by sheer scale, but some of the borough’s priciest deals flow through independent firms with a fraction of the agents.
While the city’s largest brokerages closed thousands of deals across Manhattan in 2025, independently-owned firms like Coleman Real Estate, the Modlin Group and Kleier Residential led the market in median sale price and year-over-year pricing growth, according to The Real Deal’s analysis of independent brokerages with fewer than 50 agents among the city’s top firms.
Some of the smallest firms generated outsized numbers. Coleman Real Estate had the highest median sale price amongst the top 25 firms at roughly $7 million. The Modlin Group generated $213 million in sales with just 14 Manhattan agents.
Others rapidly expanded their footprint. Kleier Residential and Blu Realty Group posted sharp increases in total sales volume from the prior year, with Kleier’s volume jumping roughly 500 percent.
The boutiques say their advantage comes from staying small.
Michele Kleier, president of Kleier Residential, said much of the firm’s business comes through repeat clients and referrals, particularly in the luxury market — relationships she argues are harder to maintain at sprawling corporate brokerages.
That dynamic helped smaller firms punch above their weight class in Manhattan’s luxury market. Eight of the top 25 brokerages by Manhattan deal volume in 2025 were independently owned firms with fewer than 50 agents in the borough.
Some independents openly embrace the role of industry disruptor.
“I really like being a pain in the ass for people like [Robert] Reffkin,” said Leslie J. Garfield president Jed Garfield. “It inspires me.”
The city’s largest firms still cornered the market. Compass, Corcoran and Douglas Elliman each employ more than 1,000 agents in Manhattan, bolstered by sprawling resale operations and lucrative new development portfolios.
Together, the top five firms combined for over $20.2 billion across roughly 8,400 deals in 2025. Independently-owned brokerages, by comparison, accounted for about $2.6 billion across 1,000 deals — roughly 11 percent of the top 25 firms’ combined sales volume.
But some of the smaller firms say they are not trying to compete on scale.
“We don’t compete on volume,” said Adam Modlin, founder of the Modlin Group. “Most agents try to win by listing more properties. We focus on representing more important properties.”
In practice, that means concentrating on a narrow slice of the ultra-luxury inventory where a handful of trophy deals can rival the production of much larger firms.
The strategy has translated into some of Manhattan’s biggest luxury deals. The Modlin Group posted the city’s highest average sale price at $8.2 million, thanks to two high-end luxury resales exceeding $35 million for the Woolworth Mansion at 4 East 80th Street townhouse and Lenox Hill’s 907 5th Avenue co-op.
Leslie J. Garfield, which ranked just behind Coleman in median sale price at roughly $5.7 million, leaned heavily on luxury townhouse listings. Nearly 90 percent of the firm’s deals last year were sell-side transactions, according to president Jed Garfield.
That business produced mega deals including three townhomes at 16 East 64th Street, 235 West 11th Street and 348 West 22nd Street, fetching $21 million, $19.3 million and $13.5 million, respectively.
Other independents saw rapid growth. Coleman Real Estate’s median sale price jumped more than 400 percent from 2024, while Kleier Residential’s rose roughly 70 percent. Kleier’s year included a $13 million Upper East Side townhouse deal, while Coleman averaged nearly $7 million per transaction across just eight co-op and condo sales.