A Bespoke broker whose arrival at the boutique brokerage sparked a lawsuit from his former employer is joining The Agency, less than a year after his contentious move.
Andrew Azoulay, a New York City-based broker who worked as vice president of business development, is joining the Los Angeles-based brokerage. Azoulay joined Bespoke from Douglas Elliman, where he cultivated a star-studded client list, including star basketball players like Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Jason Kidd, as well as entertainment figures like Kendall and Kylie Jenner.
Elliman filed a lawsuit against Azoulay last year after he left for Bespoke, claiming he owed the firm $700,000 in clawbacks. The case was settled in August, but Azoulay declined to comment on the terms.
“There’s a lot of emotions when people move, especially when you’ve been somewhere for 12 years,” he said. “I have a great relationship with Howard [Lorber], we worked things out. It was very amicable on both sides.”
Azoulay is bringing $160 million in listings with him to The Agency, according to a company representative, about $120 million of which could be seen on his StreetEasy page viewed by The Real Deal. Azoulay self-reported $100 million in sales volume last year.
Bespoke did not respond to a request for comment.
Azoulay said he was personally recruited by CEO Mauricio Umansky.
The two brokerages have been peers in the Big Apple since 2022, when Hamptons-born Bespoke opened its first New York City office. Bespoke finished sixth in TRD’s 2023 ranking of the Hamptons’ top residential brokerages, with $879 million in sell-side, on-market sales, and
The Agency landed in the Hamptons last summer, when Tyler Whitman, a former Triplemint broker and cast member on Bravo’s “Million Dollar Listing: New York,” opened a franchise of the California-based firm on the South Fork.
The firm made its debut in TRD’s Manhattan 2022 brokerage rankings after acquiring Triplemint last spring. It finished 11th with $194 million in volume, up slightly from the $189 million Triplemint recorded in 2021.
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