Beverly Hills-based brokerage The Agency has acquired New York-based Triplemint in a deal that will allow the boutique brokerage to expand in New York.
The acquisition price was not disclosed.
The two firms have raised $35 million in growth capital from investors as well.
The co-founders of Triplemint, David Walker and Philip Lang, will join The Agency as chief strategy officer and chief business officer, respectively. Mauricio Umansky will remain as chief executive, Billy Rose will retain his role as vice chairman and Rainy Hake Austin will remain president of the company. Umansky and Rose founded the firm in 2011.
Triplemint’s staff is also joining The Agency.
“We wanted to expand into New York City, which is an important market for us,” Umansky said. “If we can have corporate offices on both coasts, that’s tremendously strong. Having headquarters in Manhattan allows us to service the entire East Coast in a better fashion.”
He added that Austin met the Triplemint team when speaking at a conference and realized that the two companies “spoke the same language.”
“We were coming at real estate from two different areas but the same goals,” Umansky said.
He said The Agency would benefit from Triplemint’s high-tech platform, which will help to increase efficiencies.
“From the beginning, I have been motivated by the core belief that real estate can and should be better for agents, sellers and buyers alike. By bringing Triplemint and The Agency together, we can achieve that mission tenfold,” Walker said in a statement. “The Agency is the most powerful brand in luxury real estate. Combined with the cutting-edge technology platform we’ve been developing over the past seven years, together we will completely raise the bar for our industry, offering agents and clients more value than ever before.”
The Agency, meanwhile, brings a luxury, marketing-heavy approach.
“We were approaching real estate from a very high marketing background,” Umansky said.. “When we analyzed both businesses and what we both wanted to do to grow, it made sense to grow together versus separately.”
The company is now looking to create a back-end platform that improves user experience and the organization’s website. Umansky added that The Agency was looking to “become the curators of data so we can start predicting analytics and start really…predicting (trends).”
“The real estate agents can have the ability to predict what’s happening with the economy and housing way before the economists are actually predicting it,” he added. “I want to create data that will start helping that productivity and help our agents become go-to advisors.”
The Agency has been in expansion mode. In 2021, the company opened 11 new offices. In the first quarter of this year it has opened another six locations.
A lot of its expansion is coming through franchises, which Umansky said will be roughly half of the company’s growth moving forward.
“We are looking to continue to grow through franchises,” Umansky said. “We believe that real estate is a local business and being part of your local community is tremendously important.”
Still, Umansky said the company was not opposed to doing more acquisitions in the future.
“It’s all an opportunistic situation in terms of what makes sense,” he said.
“Right now there’s an amazing opportunity in the real estate world,” he said. “There’s turmoil happening in real estate, and when there’s turmoil there’s opportunity. We will continue to grow, continue to serve and be better and will continue to build our tech platforms….and expand and grow throughout the globe.”
