Brothers George and Manny Sarkis, Douglas Elliman’s Sarkis Team, look at their new office opening in Boston’s Financial District as a sort of dry run.
The duo say they’ve always wanted to have their own standalone office — which just opened at 44 Batterymarch Street — and hope that they can branch out to other parts of the state or even the country once they’ve honed their best practices.
“We’d like to continue to grow,” Manny Sarkis said, noting that Elliman has offices in the Back Bay and Nantucket. “We’re looking to master this — the operation of running an office and running a team in its own office. … The goal is to go maybe to another part of Massachusetts or Cape and the islands. … But we’ll start here and get this right.”
For now they’re taking a team of 15, including themselves, as what they say is the only real estate office in the area. It’s a prime location, the brothers say, because of the foot traffic and the opening up of offices — notably Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch — in the area. It’s also close to the North Shore, the South Shore and western suburbs.
The 4,000-square-foot office was designed by Linda Zarifi, and has been fully renovated; it can accommodate 30 desks..There is also a rooftop space, which the Sarkis brothers, who are members of the Douglas Elliman Sports & Entertainment division, plan to outfit in the future.
“It allows George and I to do things the Sarkis Team way, backed by Douglas Elliman where we can run our team like a company that’s kind of like our hub … be creative and have team meetings there and events there,” Manny Sarkis said.
This addition to Douglas Elliman’s office directory comes on the heels of the Sarkis Team being named the No. 1 large team in Boston by volume and sales and the No. 26 large team nationwide by volume via 2023 RealTrends.
The Sarkis brothers, who have been with Elliman since 2017, say the Boston residential market — which includes the neighboring suburbs like Charlestown, Wellesley and Brookline — is strong because of the city’s technology, research, medical and higher education sectors.
“There’s a lot of outside people coming in from other states and other countries,” George Sarkis said. “Inventory is low, average prices continue to rise year over year. The summers are slower obviously, but overall the market is strong.”
Indeed, the median sale price in Boston alone in 2023, according to Redfin, is $810,000, up a little more than 1.3 percent over 2022, though the number of homes sold has dropped more than 25 percent year-over-year.