Size does matter in the residential real estate business on the East End of Long Island.
The big companies — brokerages that are also among the biggest in Manhattan — dominate the market on the South and North forks.
The Corcoran Group heads the procession with 413 sales professionals, followed by Prudential Douglas Elliman with 295 and Brown Harris Stevens with 171, according to company data.
Corcoran achieved sizable growth over the last several years after a string of acquisitions of smaller local firms throughout the East End. Within the last year alone, Corcoran’s parent company acquired Allan M. Schneider Associates, adding offices in the North Fork and around 200 agents.
Judi Desiderio, president and founder of the 51-agent Town & Country Real Estate, which is not among the area’s largest firms, said, “Corcoran bought 70 percent of the agents.”
Elliman added 20 agents to its ranks in the last year, according to the company’s Web site and April 2006 data from Suffolk Research Service. Brown Harris Stevens — the exclusive Hamptons and North Fork affiliate of Christie’s Great Estates, a subsidiary of Christie’s — added 51 agents in the last year.
George Simpson, owner of Suffolk Research, a property records company in Southampton, boiled the real estate landscape down: “There are the top three biggest companies; then there are a bunch of dogs and cats.”
Of course, the top firms themselves are happy to boast about their size, too.
“Size does matter in terms of the services we can provide to our customers and clients,” said Jay Flagg, a real estate broker and manager of the Southampton office at Prudential Douglas Elliman. “You need to have certain infrastructure today to provide the highest quality service to your customers and clients. That takes immense resources.”
But Desiderio said she does not wish to have a massive company.
“Size matters to a point. But out here, people want individual attention,” Desiderio said. At the end of the day, the big companies “will do the quantity thing. We will do the quality thing.” Since her small operation celebrated its six-month anniversary in April 2006, she has almost doubled her agent pool by about 20 agents.
Corcoran, Elliman and Brown Harris Stevens have some of the priciest home listings — ranging all the way up to $29, $45 and $35 million, respectively. But small firms have some of the highest-priced listings too, in addition to the big guys.
Town & Country has many multi-million-dollar single-family home listings, as well as commercial properties including the $55 million exclusive for the 10,000-square-foot waterside East Hampton Point Resort & Marina property.
After the three biggest firms, there’s Century 21 Agawam Albertson, which employs 134 agents, 12 more than last year, according to the company Web site and Suffolk Research.
A smaller, high-end niche player is Sotheby’s International Realty, with 82 agents. Its size stayed fl at from last April, according to the company’s Web site and Suffolk Research. Focusing on deals in excess of $20 million, “they have three good, solid offices,” Town & Country’s Desiderio said.
Some speculate that in the dog-eat-dog world of real estate, the big companies will eventually absorb even more of the smaller companies.
Desiderio said adamantly, “I’m not for sale.”
Go to charts: Biggest firms on the East End and their priciest listings