Serhant Snags Brooklyn New Dev Broker From Compass

Raquel Lomonico will be kicking off the spring selling season at a new brokerage.

The veteran Brooklyn new development agent has left the Barak Blackburn Team at Compass to start a team at Serhant, based in Williamsburg.

Joining her at Serhant are Alison Glestein of Sotheby’s International Real Estate and Winnie Lou from Compass. Lomonico says she plans to launch six new buildings this year, four condos and two rentals, with a combined sellout of over $35 million. The two rental buildings comprise 200 units.

It’s the second major addition in Brooklyn for Serhant in recent months, after townhouse specialist Ravi Kantha and four other agents from Leslie Garfield in January.

The brokerage placed fifth in the The Real Deal’s recent ranking of brokerages in the borough after scoring $330 million in on-market, sell-side volume over 200 deals in 2023. Compass finished second in TRD’s Brooklyn brokerage rankings for 2023, with $5 billion in volume.

Serhant’s notable new development projects include The Huron and Quay Tower. He’ll also be selling a planned 1,000-unit Naftali development near Navy Yard when it comes to fruition.

The move marks Lomonico’s third brokerage in as many years.

The longtime Corcoran agent joined Compass from Nest Seekers in late 2022 to work on the Barak Blackburn Team, Compass’ top-selling Brooklyn team that year with $151 million in volume to finish sixth overall in TRD’s Brooklyn broker rankings.

“I felt like it was time, I wanted to make sure I could financially do it, I wanted to make sure I had the exact right people,” Lomonico said of founding a team. She called Serhant “just a little bit more innovative” than her former firm.

“Compass has amazing technology but at the end of the day, it comes down to having the tools to do better for your clients,” Lomonico said.

New development projects are seeing more demand after a slow winter, Lomonico said. New developments can be slower to sell in a down market because developers have less room to lower their prices.

“All of a sudden in the last few weeks we’re seeing things pick up,” she said. “We’re seeing in these smaller condo buildings things are going into contract at basically full ask … there’s even been bidding wars on some.”