TRD Forum 1: Corcoran Vs Elliman

“The Real Deal Real Estate Showcase and Forum” started off with a bang when the discussion between two of New York City’s most influential real estate giants, Pam Liebman of Corcoran, and Howard Lorber of Douglas Elliman traded jabs, compliments, opinions, and enthralled the crowd of a couple thousand. The discussion, moderated by The Real Deal publisher, Amir Korangy, covered the infamous “Premier Agent” feature, Compass’s aggressive agent recruiting tactics, and how differences in their respective marketing budgets are affecting their respective bottom lines.

StreetEasy’s Premier Agent feature allows brokers to buy advertising space on another broker’s exclusive listing within a certain region of New York City. (See: http://www.morrismoving.com/premier-agent-fiasco-the-what-how/ to learn more about why this is causing a kerfuffle amongst NYC realtors). Setting the scene for the near-entirety of their 40 minute discussion, Howard and Pam’s perspectives on the matter differed. Pam recognized the features’ success, and the inevitable continuation and expansion of similar programs. That being said, she also refuses to allow her agents to use Corcoran’s advertising budget to buy Premier Agent space.

Howard was brief and simple in his response to this “fiasco” as I termed it several weeks ago in my aforementioned blog post. In short, Howard isn’t losing any sleep over it, and he says it’s too early to tell whether or not it’ll be a significant problem.

The two also discussed how they differ in the handling of new business developments. Douglas Elliman, the largespam&howardt New York City real estate company by number of agents, prefers to lure super brokers to the firm with first dibs at new developments. Corcoran, conversely, rewards their dedicated teams with new developments. Corcoran has lost its fair share of talent to NYC based real estate companies, including Elliman, but still holds the 2nd spot in largest brokerage by number of employees.

Douglass Elliman, though New York’s largest real estate company, saw a weak profit last quarter, which Howard equated it to large expenditures entering new markets in Los Angeles, Aspen, and South Florida. Elliman is also well known for huge marketing expenditures including buying copious Knicks tickets for wealthy buyers and investors, and sponsoring Art Basel, an international art fair in Miami Beach. Corcoran’s strategy, however seems to be a bit more… strategic, let’s say. “We’re not as loud…. We never did a huge magazine, we don’t spend enormous amounts of money on Knicks tickets, or on Art Basel…” While Corcoran does work with a much smaller advertising budget, everything they do, says Pam, is done in the best interest of all of their agents, a not so subtle jab at Elliman’s focus on getting their biggest agents new business.

Whenever a new player makes a big splash in an industry, people take notice. Compass has been scooping up big name realtors, and has been growing exponentially over the last couple of years. Howard was quick to denounce their rise as being insubstantial, “the fact that they have very little new development… says it all.” Short of enthusiastically agreeing with Howard, Pam took an indifferent approach to the budding real estate giant by merely suggesting that they’re making a lot of noise, “and in a couple of years, someone else will be making a lot of noise.”

The discussion between these two had everything a viewer could hope for: excitement, differing opinions, a bit of heat, but above all, mutual respect.