Luxury broker Tomer Fridman is starting 2021 off with a bang, taking his 11-person team from Compass to Beverly Hills-based Hilton & Hyland, according to The Dirt.
Fridman, who is perhaps best known as broker to well-known celebrities like the Kardashian-Jenner family, Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez, among others, moved to Compass from Sotheby’s International Realty in 2017 with his high-earning client list in tow.
Comprised of five staffers and six agents, including Fridman, The Fridman Group closed a team record of $539 million in sales in 2020, according to Forbes. Some of the more noteworthy transactions included Kylie Jenner’s purchase of a record-setting land deal and representation of Viewpoint Collection in the sale of L.A.’s historic Owlwood Estate. The group is also currently representing fashion designer Eva Chow’s South Mapleton Drive estate, which is listed at $65 million.
“Hilton and Hyland is the heritage brand for the L.A. market,” Fridman told Forbes. “In this business, it’s important for us to hone our brand and build our brand. Hilton and Hyland provides that. It’s much more of a concierge-level approach where you have a bespoke brokerage and a very curated methodology of representing properties, marketing properties and servicing properties.”
Within the last year or so, a handful of other notable agents have also left Compass, including Kofi Nartey, who joined Side in May; Steve Frankel, who returned to Coldwell Banker in January after about a week with Compass; and Lisa Optican, who also moved over to Hilton & Hyland in May.
“Tomer has class and carries himself without ego,” Jeff Hyland, Hilton & Hyland president, said in a statement. “His encyclopedic knowledge will take him to the next level and we couldn’t ask for a better agent to participate in our firm’s success.”
Fridman’s 2020 was made notable not just by some big transactions, but because of a lawsuit he faced in June from a fellow Compass agent who alleged that Fridman didn’t split the commission on a Brentwood home sale of $1.8 million. Both Fridman and Compass denied the allegation.
Update: An earlier version of this article misstated that Steve Frankel spent one year at Compass. Frankel spent about one week at Compass before returning to Coldwell Banker.
