Douglas Elliman snags Texas Exec from Kuper-Sotheby’s

Just a few weeks after Douglas Elliman lured a top Central Texas agent from Kuper Sotheby’s, it landed a new exec from the same source. Melissa Webb made the move to executive sales manager for Austin and San Antonio.

Webb was a brokerage manager for Kuper Sotheby’s International Realty Austin for three-and- a-half years, working in the company’s downtown and Westlake offices.

Under her management, agents made close to $1 billion in sales in 2021, and she managed the top two agents in Austin, Webb said. (Those agents are Kumara Wilcoxon and Bridget Ramey — both Kuper-Sotheby’s agents and ranked first and second, respectively, in the Austin Business Journal’s 2022 Residential Real Estate Awards winners, solo agent category.)

Elliman expanded into Texas with the opening of a Houston office in 2019. Offices in Dallas and Austin followed in 2021, as did a farm and ranch division for rural properties in the state. The company went public late last year, splitting from parent holding company Vector Group in December 2021. Elliman ranked second on The Real Deal’s 2021 list of Manhattan’s top residential brokerages. It just made another high-profile hire for the executive sales manager of its Houston office, snagging James Horne from Compass.

Kuper Sotheby’s entered the Austin luxury market in 2014.

Webb has worked in the Austin real estate market for more than 30 years, including at Keller Williams and Turnquist. She’s on the board of Austin’s Luxury League and is the vice president of philanthropy for Austin’s National Charity League

Webb replaced Matthew Ditlow, who will be a sales agent at Douglas Elliman Realty.