Josh Altman is beyond bullish on Orange County.
The co-founder of Douglas Elliman’s The Altman Brothers Team sees big potential nearly 60 miles south of where he and his brother opened their first standalone office on Robertson Boulevard in Los Angeles.
This week the Altman Brothers debuted their permanent Corona del Mar flagship, which Altman said is expected to eventually generate $1 billion annually in sales.
“One hundred percent we’ll match L.A. and potentially exceed it,” Altman said earlier this week from the new space. “The agents that we have very selectively and slowly brought to be part of the team, everybody brings so much Orange County history, knowledge and skill.”
The Orange County operation, which has about a dozen agents, has so far generated $148 million in sales since the start of the year, with active listings over $350 million. Newport Beach, Dana Point and Laguna Beach currently drive the OC business.
The aim is to duplicate the success of the Los Angeles team, which counts more than 20 agents. The expected growth is why the Altman Brothers inked a 15-year lease on the former bank-occupied office. The team also continues to occupy what was originally a temporary office two blocks away, which opened a year and a half ago while the permanent space was under renovation.
“Orange County, especially in Newport Beach, it’s very undervalued,” Altman said. “I would bet on this market. There’s no mansion tax in this market.”
Measure ULA, also known as the mansion tax, went into effect in April 2023 for the city of Los Angeles. It applies a 4 percent transfer tax on transactions above $5.15 million and 5.5 percent on those of $10.3 million or more. The thresholds are updated annually in step with the Consumer Price Index.
The new office, which the company says is a lounge open to the community, sits on a busy stretch of road at 3700 Pacific Coast Highway.
CEO Heather Altman, Josh’s wife and “Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles” co-star, designed the office. The building was taken down to the studs, with street-facing slider doors making it easy for cars and passersby to see current listings displayed on a big screen.
Where the Los Angeles office was inspired by Art Deco and “Mad Men,” Corona del Mar is lighter and anchored by a 20-foot Esmeralda stone counter with an etching of the Altman Brothers logo. The rest of the 2,200-square-foot space includes a kitchen, coffee station complete with a foam printer, residential-like powder room and media space for Zoom calls and content creation.
The Altmans view the multi-million-dollar investment as a way to position themselves in a competitive market, perhaps made even more dynamic by the National Association of Realtors lawsuit settlement rules that went into effect Aug. 17. The main changes, stemming from the Sitzer-Burnett Missouri class action, requires buyers to now sign an agreement with an agent before seeing a house, in addition to prohibiting buyer agent commission information on the MLS.
“This [office] is us not only doubling down, but tripling down in a business where, of course, a lot of people are going to probably get out of and exit, or are downsizing,” Josh Altman said.
Careful expansion
Aside from L.A. and Corona del Mar, the Altman Brothers have 25 people in Scottsdale, two in San Diego and three in Las Vegas.
They’re measured on whether they’ll add more offices. The team, by way of example, referred $100 million in Miami sales last year without the need for a Florida office.
“The numbers need to make sense for us,” Heather Altman said of expansion through offices or the agent ranks. “Adding more people doesn’t always mean that, and you lose quality control. We’re very hands-on with our business, with our clients and our team.”
She assumed the CEO position in late 2022 to manage the day-to-day business, although, she had already been doing much of the day-to-day managing before taking on the title.
“The show [‘Million Dollar Listing’] has never done her justice,” Josh Altman said of her role in the business. “It was always ‘Josh’s wife.’ People never had any idea, except for me.”
Formalizing her role now allows brothers Josh and Matt Altman to focus solely on selling.
The CEO has built out an in-house infrastructure that didn’t exist before. That includes a director of operations, transaction manager, financial advisor, two real estate assistants, a listing coordinator and two-person marketing team.
“When I came in as CEO, it wasn’t all of a sudden, ‘Let’s hire everyone,’” she said. “I needed to make sure the team and the office was carrying through everything for our clients and then, with our agents, providing training and working with them to identify their business model, target area, specialty and looking at our overall books.”
Although the Altmans’ business is growing, they’ve declined offers to scale more rapidly through franchising or an acquisition.
“We know teams and companies that have 100, 200, 300 people and I can tell you 95 percent of them don’t do anything,” Josh Altman explained. “We’ve been offered that [structure] and we don’t want to do that.”
In all, the business is targeting $1.1 billion in California sales this year.
As for the 2025 growth target, Josh Altman said he’s happy enough with the business.
“We’ve sold $4 million a day for the past 2,000 days,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a numbers thing. I think it’s a balance.”
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