Illustrated Properties brings Valore Group in Palm Beach under its brand

The Illustrated Properties brand just got a little bit bigger.

Illustrated Properties Real Estate, which merged with the Keyes Company last summer, brought Palm Beach-based Valore Group Real Estate under the Illustrated brand, Keyes CEO Mike Pappas said.

Pappas, whose company already owned the Valore Group, said the brand merger shows the company’s commitment to the Illustrated brand. The expanded office at the Paramount Theatre Building in Palm Beach will open later this year with about 50 agents, according to a press release.

Eric Sain, incoming 2019 president of the Florida Realtors, was named district sales manager for the new Palm Beach office, at 139 North County Road. Valore’s founder Kevin Leonard joined Keyes in 2011, and was recently promoted to vice president of Keyes’ luxury division, which listed more than $1 billion in luxury homes in 2016.

Pappas said Keyes is working to acquire more companies this year. “The brokerage business is continuing to consolidate and the margins keep changing,” he said. “In my dad’s day, it was a fifty-fifty split, and now it’s not that. … The only way it can work if you’re a brokerage is to do volume.”

When Keyes and Illustrated merged last year, the firms said they generated more than $6 billion in annual revenue and have more than 1,100 agents in Palm Beach County, more than double their competitors.