A top Miami and New York-based broker team returned to Douglas Elliman after a four-year stretch at Compass, The Real Deal has learned.
Ruthie and Ethan Assouline’s Assouline Team is back at Elliman as of Monday. The husband and wife-led luxury residential team expanded to Miami early last year and closed on sales totaling about $300 million in both markets since then, Ruthie Assouline said.
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The group, which includes Oliver Gold, Eytan Namiech and Samantha Hershbein, is working out of Elliman’s 1111 Lincoln Road office in Miami Beach and its 575 Madison Avenue office in New York. The Assoulines left Elliman for Compass in early 2018, and split their time between both markets equally, Ruthie Assouline said.
At Compass, the team set records in South Florida with the $44 million sale of 6360 and 6342 North Bay Road in Miami Beach to Gabe Plotkin, founder of the investment management firm Melvin Capital Management, a major short-seller of GameStop. Plotkin’s purchase marked the highest priced sale on North Bay Road. The Assouline Team was also involved in the $29 million sale of 3029 Brickell Avenue in Miami, Madonna’s former estate, and the $37.5 million sale of an oceanfront home and lot in Miami Beach’s Altos Del Mar neighborhood to Guaranteed Rate CEO Victor Ciardelli.
The team recently represented the buyer of a $16.5 million full floor at the Robert A.M. Stern-designed 18 Gramercy Park in New York.
Ruthie Assouline said the team was not speaking with other brokerages, but that Elliman provided “great opportunities” that fit into the team’s strategy. The Assouline Team is looking for “really good rockstar agents” with two to three years of experience in New York and Miami, she said. Assouline spoke highly of her time at Compass, which recently stopped offering agents equity or cash incentives as it embarks on a major cost-cutting plan.
In May, top Palm Beach agent Margit Brandt left Compass after six months with the brokerage to join Premier Estate Properties. On the flip side, Compass nabbed the 30-person Riley Smith Group, which left Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices EWM Realty after 17 years, in June.
More recently in September, a top Compass team in New York, led by Wesley Stanton and Jordan Hoch, also returned to Elliman from Compass.
The migration of wealthy buyers from the Northeast to Miami has helped fuel the Assouline Team’s growth over the past two years, as it has with other top brokers and teams. Assouline said she expects that her clients will continue to travel back and forth, buying and selling homes, even as the overall residential market slows down.