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LPT Holdings, a real estate holding company founded by CEO Robert Palmer, has launched a new international luxury real estate brand called Aperture Global Real Estate, leadership has informed Inman.
The luxury brokerage is starting out in five countries — U.S., U.K., Portugal, Canada and Sint Maarten — and 15 U.S. states, with about 20 more global locations to come soon in additional regions, including Asia and the Middle East, the firm said.
Robert Palmer | Aperture Global Real Estate
Aperture Global joins LPT Realty under the LPT Holdings umbrella about three years after LPT Realty was first launched, and as LPT Holdings continues progress toward an initial public offering, which firm leaders say is about one year away.
Palmer will also serve as CEO at Aperture Global and Michael Valdes, who joined LPT about 10 months ago to head its global division, will serve as global president. Mercedes Saewitz, former principal broker and founding agent at Compass, will serve as senior vice president of operations.
“We’re launching the second brand, Aperture, as part of LPT Holdings to really complete the agent life cycle, the brokerage-for-life life cycle, as we think of it, so that no matter what an agent’s definition of success is, whether that’s having a luxury brand with a strong brokerage brand and brand guidelines and global reach, like Aperture, or a more agent-first brand where agents can take the LPT logo and make it to be the individual brand … we want to be able to serve all those different agents to their definition of success,” Palmer told Inman.
The firm is launching with commitments from over 100 luxury agents that represent more than $1 billion in annual sales, Palmer and Valdes told Inman. Specific agent announcements are not yet ready, but agents from leading luxury firms, including Sotheby’s International Realty, Brown Harris Stevens, Douglas Elliman, eXp Realty, Compass and Keller Williams, have all been secured. Over the next four to six weeks, Aperture Global will make more market-specific announcements with details about agents who have joined the brand.
Michael Valdes | Aperture Global Real Estate
“We’re talking about production in the hundreds of millions for some of these agents,” Valdes teased. “Really big agents.”
While under the LPT Holdings umbrella, Aperture Global and LPT Realty will be two independent consumer-facing brands, but back-office systems like transaction processing, agent payments, compliance, etc., will serve both brands simultaneously, Palmer said. Likewise, agents will be able to easily make referrals and collaborate across both brands.
Aperture Global is aiming to ultimately expand to the 100 most luxurious cities around the world, Valdes said. For now, those international cities include Toronto, London, Lisbon and the island of Sint Maarten. One of the unique offerings the firm will provide consumers is a rewards program, Valdes added, where those consumers who are in the top percentile of the firm’s clients will benefit from exclusive experiences “that money cannot necessarily buy,” something the brand is calling “unobtanium.”
The firm’s global network is what sets it apart, Palmer and Valdes said, and is a value proposition that they plan to lean into with the launch.
“We’ve had a soft launch in a couple states where we’ve had some early Aperture agents and we had a great story of having a penthouse in Miami where we actually identified the buyer from Portugal,” Valdes said. “And that all happened while these agents were talking to one another on a Zoom call, and it was about $17 million. So those are great things as to truly creating a luxury network with luxury agents across the globe, not just a referral that you try to reach another franchise owner in another country and hope that they’ll pick up your call.”
Mercedes Saewitz | Aperture Global Real Estate
The luxury firm will also be leaning into new development opportunities, Palmer said, especially in new dev hot spots like Sint Maarten and Miami.
LPT Realty is considered a cloud-based brokerage, but Aperture Global will have select office locations in key luxury cities, Palmer added, calling the brand “brick and mortar-light.”
The firm will draw on new technology for targeting and marketing campaigns, as well as its elite agents, to drive visibility, a press statement said.
“We’re excited for the community this builds,” Palmer told Inman. “We’re excited for the opportunity that it creates across the agent communities, both in the LPT brand and the Aperture brand, and Michael and I are very focused on finding those top luxury agents around the global who have that entrepreneurial spirit and want to partner with the future of global luxury real estate.”
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