Veteran broker Michael Shapot, along with a team of six agents, has moved from Prudential Douglas Elliman to the year-old residential brokerage Keller Williams NYC.
Shapot brought six members of the Michael Shapot Team to Keller Williams’s new 425 Park Avenue location: Luis Vazquez, Carson Alexander, Ying Li-Oshrin, Jim Biting, Elizabeth Edwards and one more who is finalizing departure plans. (Other members of the team decided to stay at Elliman.)
Shapot, who joined Elliman in 2008, previously spent 13 years at the now-defunct Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy. In 2006, he was named Realtor of the Year by the Manhattan Association of Realtors. He said he first pondered joining Keller Williams a year ago, after Elliman alum Ilan Bracha launched the New York City arm of the national brokerage.
Already intrigued by Keller Williams’s unique business model, which offers agents a 70 percent commission split and a lifetime cut of commissions from agents they recruit, Shapot wanted to make sure Bracha was bringing the culture of the national firm to his operation. That culture, he said, is one that encourages agents to be entrepreneurial and creative, to the benefit of their clients.
“This is an agent-centric business,” he said. “It’s the agent that builds the relationship with the buyers and sellers, not the company or the company’s website.”
By contrast, “the company is king” at Elliman and other large firms in the city, Shapot said.