Douglas Elliman Recruits Giles Group in Austin

Wade Giles and his brokerage team in Austin are joining one of the largest firms in the country.

Giles and his team of Arion Crenshaw, Jessica Philpot and Colton Reid will join national firm Douglas Elliman, the company told The Real Deal. The Giles Group has been ranked as a top-10 producing brokerage in the small team category for the past three years, according to the Austin Business Journal rankings.

The team did over $75 million in residential sales across 58 transactions in 2022, as a part of local brokerage Moreland Properties. Among notable past homes sold is a six bed, ten bath, 11,000 square foot mansion at 4404 Mirador Drive that was listed at $5 million when it was sold in 2019, according to Zillow.

Giles has a career sales total of over $325 million, and more than 50 percent of his listings sold over asking price in the past two years, according to a media release. He was the top buyer’s agent in the 78704 zip code in 2021, the release stated. The average home cost in 78704 is nearly $900,000, Austin home data shows.

The move comes amid a national wave of mergers and acquisitions in residential real estate, as small firms and teams are being absorbed into larger ones.

New York-based Douglas Elliman, which ranked second on The Real Deal’s 2022 and 2021 list of Manhattan’s top residential brokerages, expanded into Texas with the opening of a Houston office in 2019. Offices in Dallas and Austin followed in 2021, as did a Texas farm and ranch division. The company went public late last year, splitting from parent holding company Vector Group in December 2021.

Elliman posted slight losses last year with $1.15 billion in revenues in 2022 compared to $1.35 billion in 2021.

The firm has been expanding its presence across Texas major metros with a focus on recruiting local talent. The firm lured Stephanie Nick-Hurd, one of Kuper Sotheby’s top Austin agents, to join Elliman last year. She has earned more than $600 million in residential sales across two decades in Austin, according to Douglas Elliman.

Home sales and new home construction in Texas tumbled last year as interest rates dampened activity across the state’s housing markets, according to data from the Texas A&M Real Estate Research Center. Texas home sales fell by more than 10 percent last year compared to 2021. Even though construction slowed from its pandemic high, overall housing supply returned to pre-pandemic levels.