Douglas Elliman’s Eklund-Gomes Team signed a five-year deal to re-commit to the brokerage.
The 90-person team led by Fredrik Eklund and John Gomes has reeled in more than $4 billion in transactions across Elliman’s 13 markets, the brokerage said. The team previously claimed the top spot in The Real Deal’s 2021 ranking of top Manhattan brokers, with $492 million in sell-side deals.
A person familiar with the deal said Eklund-Gomes’ previous contract expired at the end of the year.
The team decided to stick with Elliman for the support the team gets from the brokerage, which it called “a formidable platform.”
The team’s signing with their legacy firm bucks a series of big-name brokers who have struck out on their own, calling into question the value of a large firm in the age of social media.
Ryan Serhant, Eklund’s fellow “Million Dollar Listing” star, left Nest Seekers International in 2020 to launch his eponymous brokerage. Serhant has described the company, which offers in-house content creation resources, as centered on agents’ individual brands.
“To give those agents the resources to build their own brands so they can generate leads in their sleep … I wanted to create a platform where they could do that,” Serhant said in May.
Elliman suffered a blow in June, when star brokers Tal and Oren Alexander left to launch their own company, called Official, backed by startup brokerage Side. The brothers headed the Alexander Team, which brought in $1.8 billion in sales last year and, by their claim, 3.5 percent of Elliman’s business in 2021
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Elliman has also had to contend with former longtime executives Brad Loe and Steven James recruiting brokers to Berkshire Hathaway and aggressive recruitment efforts from Compass, which until July was offering brokers cash and equity incentives to jump ship.
The financial details of the new agreement were not disclosed. A former top-producing Elliman agent speculated that Eklund-Gomes are getting well above a 90 percent commission split. Assuming an even 90 percent split on $4 billion of sales so far this year would put the team’s gross commission income at $3.6 billion — leaving $400 million for Elliman.
Elliman has been in good company among top residential brokerages struggling to restore investor confidence as the market plunged in recent months far from a historically hot 2021. The company’s stock rose just over 1 percent on Wednesday to $3.82, up from $3.78, but down from a 52-week high of $12.66.
Executive Chairman Howard Lorber in October bought 100,000 shares at $3.99 a pop. The purchase, a likely bid at boosting agent and investor morale, made Lorber the second largest shareholder.