Upper East Side-centric brokerage Key-Ventures will join Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices’ nascent New York City operation.
The firm’s two principals, Laurance Kaiser and Craig Dix, will start their own team at Berkshire’s Madison Avenue office and take some of the dozen Key-Ventures agents with them, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Key-Ventures [TRDataCustom], which traditionally focused on co-ops On Fifth Avenue Or Sutton Place, recently expanded to other parts of the city as small firms struggle to compete with brokerage giants like the Corcoran Group and Douglas Elliman. The Real Deal sat down with Kaiser last August to talk about how the industry has changed over the last 50 years. Kaiser, who founded Key-Ventures in 1968, brokered the city’s first $1 million residential deal in 1978.
Berkshire’s New York City operation, overseen by Ellie Johnson, launched in January.
Earlier this week, the firm announced it was planning on bulking up its commercial presence in New York and would be aggressively recruiting. [WSJ] — Konrad Putzier