Every real estate firm needs an office of its own. That’s certainly true for two-year-old, high-commission-split brokerage Oxford Property Group, which is moving into its own office for the first time.
The 130-agent residential and commercial brokerage currently shares space at 220 Fifth Avenue with a law firm, but will move this month into its own full-floor office at Fifth Avenue and 30th Street.
Adam Mahfouda, a Rutenberg Realty alum who founded Oxford Property Group with industry veteran Greg Harden, said most of the company’s agents work remotely rather than in the office. Still, he said he’s looking forward to having “our own branded space.”
Oxford is one of many new Manhattan brokerages with a high-commission-split model, in which agents keep the lion’s share of their commissions while paying the firm fixed monthly fees. In what Mahfouda touts as “the best commission structure in the industry,” Oxford agents can choose to pay the firm $349 per month and keep their full commission or pay $49 per month and take 90 percent instead.
This model is different from Rutenberg and other high-commission-split firms, Mahfouda said, because there are no transaction fees paid per deal. “While many agencies in New York claim to be 100 percent firms, they typically retain over 25 percent of the gross commissions on rental transactions,” he said.
One benefit of Oxford’s new, 4,500-square-foot office is that teams or individual agents have the option of renting a permanent desk or office within the company’s space, Mahfouda said. The company will also offer 20 to 30 shared workstations.
“Part of the reason we’re moving is we’d like to offer agents a desk if they’d like,” Mahfouda noted.
He said the firm expects “to continue growing and bringing in new talent,” and the new space should be large enough to accommodate the firm’s growth for some time, even if it adds “another 100 to 200 agents.”