Jonathan Rosen and Christy Berry
Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty’s top-selling team, led by Christy Berry and Jonathan Rosen of the RosenBerry Group, left the business to set up their own boutique luxury brokerage for the Dallas-Fort Worth market last Friday.
The new brokerage, based near Highland Park in Dallas, is called The Collective Residential and will have a focus on enhanced design, excellence and innovation.
Berry and Rosen, who have been in a team together for around 18 months, had been working on starting their own business for the last six months, they said.
They were encouraged by the active market they were seeing for this year to go ahead and make the move.
With a combined experience of 20 years in the real estate sales business, Rosen has carved out a niche in development and renovation of luxury properties, while Berry has a large buyer and seller database of families.
“We are going to see a stronger market in 2017 than we did in 2016. The last two quarters of 2016 slowed down (because of the election) but we have got a lot of great inventory coming on this year so we think it will be a pretty good year,” said Rosen.
Last year, the RosenBerry Group did $130 million in sales.
“Our goal is definitely to break the $150 million barrier this year,” he said.
The Collective brokerage has been designed to give luxury clients a bespoke experience, said Rosen.
“You don’t see that in the Dallas-Fort-Worth market right now,” he said. The brokerages in Dallas tend to be big, with at least 250 agents.
National trend for boutique luxury brokerages
“We looked at other market places across the country, and you can see where Dallas is heading. You can see a window for boutique shops here as you see in places like L.A. and New York. Many people coming from those market places to Dallas are used to seeing bespoke brokerages,” he said.
The Collective principals had also noticed some of the larger brokerages, such as Coldwell Banker, were setting up luxury divisions.
“Being a smaller boutique agency makes it easier to test different ideas out and not having to train hundreds of people for new tech. We can be a lot more nimble in the market place,” said Rosen.
And there will definitely be a lot more creative freedom, he added.
The Collective currently has five agents, bringing one extra agent from BFSIR along with an existing team of four experienced agents and two support staff. They are hiring more support people and will take on extra agents in time but want to stay a certain size.
“We are getting calls from agents every day — we are just not ready yet,” said Berry.
One of the big differences between The Collective and the big brokerage model is the collegial culture, one of sharing ideas, said Berry. The new office is completely open-plan with no doors.
“We will be bringing back that sense of agents working together,” she said.
“In a small place, you can talk about: ‘How can I sell this listing? What’s a new way of marketing?’ You can have a real sense of community.”
“Our goal is to create a culture like no other, which will benefit agents and more importantly, their clients,” added Berry.
Clients, meanwhile have been very supportive about the move, she said. “A lot have asked why had we not done this earlier.”
The new company’s website is currently under construction.
