The Agency Franchise Heads for The Hamptons

The Agency is heading to the Hamptons.

Four months after Tyler Whitman began courting investors, the broker confirmed the new outpost is slated to open for business Aug. 15 in Bridgehampton.

Whitman, who joined the California-based brokerage when it acquired Triplemint last year, said he plans to start the franchise with fewer than 10 brokers and eventually grow to between 30 and 50.

The broker will keep his team in the city while acting as a sales manager for the Hamptons. He recruited Dana Trotter, a Sotheby’s International Realty broker whose website claims over 25 years of experience and $1 billion in sales volume, to work as co-managing partner and lead sales.

Whitman said the terms of his investor pitch have not changed significantly since a copy was obtained in February by The Real Deal. In the deck, he sought $1 million for a 10 percent stake in the franchise.

The Agency’s franchise fee is $45,000 and its royalty rate is 6 percent. The pitch assumed $250,000 of legal, office and licensing expenses and set a goal of a minimum working capital balance of $500,000 at the end of each quarter.

The deck also estimated a year one income floor of $10 million, a goal of $20 million — or 6 percent market share — and a “stretch goal” of $30 million, which would work out to 8.5 percent market share.

Whitman, who met Trotter riding horses, said he sensed tensions over the turf Out East while looking to set up business.

“Most of the local agents had tried to scare me out of being here,” Whitman said. “The first time I saw Dana I knew who she was and she trotted up to me and I thought she was going to be mean to me and try to scare me out of town and it was the opposite.”

Finding office space was the biggest challenge to getting the franchise up and running, according to Whitman, citing the lack of inventory.

“It feels like the Hamptons is the only place where commercial real estate is doing really well,” he said.

Trotter dismissed concerns over the Hamptons market, which slowed in recent months after a post-lockdown era bonanza decimated inventory. A monthly report by appraisal firm Miller Samuel for Douglas Elliman said the market has shown signs of life this spring.

“Ten percent of the brokers do 90 percent of the business,” said Trotter, who is transacting under the franchise name ahead of the office’s launch. “I’ve been out here doing this long enough that I’ve been out here during the down markets.”

The Agency, co-founded in 2011 by Mauricio Umansky and Billy Rose, has since grown to more than 1,500 brokers. The firm launched 11 offices in 2021 and another six in the first quarter of 2022 by way of its franchise model.

The Hamptons announcement comes on the heels of the brokerage’s entry into the New York City new development market with a building on the Upper West Side, about a year after its arrival in the city.

Despite an aggressive expansion kick, the brokerage wasnt’t immune to the difficulties rocking residential firms and confirmed in February it had laid off 4 percent of its staff.