Two Side companies merge, creating big firm in SF resi market

City Real Estate and Polaris Realty — two of San Francisco’s biggest Side-backed companies — have merged, creating the second-largest independently owned residential agency in the city. 

With a combined 50 agents and more than $540 million in sales, only Vanguard Properties has a bigger headcount and volume, according to City founder David Cohen. 

The newly united firm will fall under the City Real Estate banner and its flagship office will be the City office on Divisadero near Alamo Square, Cohen said. He and Polaris founder Ron Abta — TRD’s 17th-biggest resi dealmaker in SF last year — agreed that the City brand was “more recognizable” and already had the infrastructure in place to grow, he said. Abta will serve as vice president of the enlarged City team, and will focus more on sales and less on operations, Cohen said.

Cohen said that he and Abta “go way back” to their days starting out at TRI Coldwell nearly two decades ago. They have done deals together over the years and both started their own businesses, with Side handling the back-end, about five years ago. 

The merger took place during the holiday slowdown, Cohen said. The Polaris Marin office in San Anselmo will become a City office, but Abta will keep his Polaris Cathedral Hill office and support staff to work on his multifamily investment company, which is not coming under the City brand.

Growth was the main goal behind the merger and Cohen said he anticipates bringing in 10 more agents by the end of this year and 15 more by the end of next year, plus additional support staff, despite the current downturn in the market. The city’s price point may have been down last year, but his overall transactions were up 25 percent compared to 2021, he said, with half of those sales coming after the market slowdown in the latter half of the year.

“This year might be a different story, but I really think 2024 and 2025 are going to be big growth years,” he said.

It might seem odd to plan for growth when many other agencies are cutting staff, including Side. Yet Cohen said he has his own business strategists, marketers and operations staff to make up for the recent Side cuts and that the “pendulum is swinging away from big box brokerages,” and towards local, independent agencies. He added that he is getting regular calls from “high-caliber agents” who want to know more about coming to City, and he thinks he will have no trouble recruiting. 

“We’re trying to add value to these agents while other companies are taking away those resources,” he said.