The directors of Cendant, the beleagueredécorporate parent of brokerages like the Corcoran Group and Sotheby’s International Realty, approved in mid-July the spin-off of its real estate division into the new firm Realogy Corporation, capping months of efforts to stem the slide in the company’s stock price, which is down nearly 30 percent in the last 52 weeks. The S & P 500 stock index is up about 1 percent for the same period.
In late July, two offspring of Cendant, Realogy (H) and Wyndham Worldwide (WYN), began trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Whether this stops the slide remains to be seen.
“This isn’t the best time for Realogy to go public,” said analyst Rick Munarriz at the Motley Fool financial Web site. Real estate-related stocks, in general, haven’t done well in the past 12 months, Munarriz noted.
Current Cendant shareholders received one share of Realogy for every four shares of Cendant; they got one share of Wyndham, the hospitality services spin-off, for every five shares of Cendant stock. Richard A. Smith, who headed the real estate services division of Cendant, became the president and vice chairman of Realogy with the spin-off.
Brokers at Realogy-owned firms, for their part, have greeted the official Cendant split with a collective yawn. Independent contractors in their respective firms, New York-based brokers are indifferent to the identity of the corporate parent, according to brokers who spoke anonymously with The Real Deal.