Boutique residential brokerage CORE is heading to the beaches of South Florida, where competition continues to grow fiercer.
The brokerage, which is 50 percent owned by Related Companies, is expanding into new markets including Florida, CORE’s founder and CEO Shaun Osher confirmed.
He said that the expansion has been in the works for about five years and was prompted after the firm won several new development projects outside New York City.
Hints of CORE’s new ventures began appearing on Osher’s personal Instagram account in October when he posted a photo of himself during a site visit in Miami along with the caption “What’s behind door No. 1? We’ll show you soon.”
A month later, another not-so-subtle post on Osher’s account told followers that CORE was working on a project in New Jersey. And in early January, CORE announced that it would be producing quarterly reports on Miami’s new development market.
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Though Osher was tight-lipped on details, he said CORE’s services would be consistent with the firm’s offerings in New York City.
“We’ve waited for the right opportunities. We’re not a company that’s all things to everyone,” he said.
Osher declined to elaborate on forthcoming projects, clients and new markets. He also declined to say if CORE would hire agents and staff those new markets, or if offices had yet been established. He said he would announce more details about the expansion later this quarter.
CORE is among the better-known boutique Manhattan brokerages that specialize in selling luxury condo product. CORE was ranked ninth on The Real Deal’s annual brokerage ranking in 2019, with nearly $450 million in closed sales in Manhattan.
The move comes amid a softening luxury market and an outflow of wealthy residents and real estate investors, often to lower-tax states such as Florida. But Osher denied CORE’s expansion is motivated by these conditions.
“We’ve been approached over the course of the past five years by developers, national developers,” he said. “It wasn’t necessarily a byproduct of people moving in and out of the city of New York.”
It’s a crowded new development marketing field in South Florida. New York rival Douglas Elliman already has a strong foothold in the market, and One Sotheby’s International Realty and Fortune International Group are among the new dev top firms. Venture-backed Compass, Brown Harris Stevens and the Corcoran Group are also vying for a piece of the action, but haven’t achieved that level kind of volume.
Write to Erin Hudson at ekh@therealdeal.com