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Luxury brokerage Douglas Elliman plans to go public as it spins off from owner Vector Group, the company said in an announcement earlier this week.
Douglas Elliman is one of the largest residential brokerage companies in the New York metro area and maintains an office in Boston’s Back Bay.
“Today’s announcement reflects our confidence in the exciting prospects of Douglas Elliman as an industry-leading brand name differentiated by its utilization of and investment in a portfolio of innovative technology services and a best-in-class team of employees and agents,” Douglas Elliman CEO Scott Durkin said in a statement. “As we move forward on this path to establish Douglas Elliman as a standalone public company, our experienced management team remains committed to optimizing our existing portfolio of solutions, expanding our market footprint and making strategic investments in early-stage, disruptive PropTech companies that keep us and our agents on the cutting edge of the industry.”
The capital raised by going public will let the brokerage expand its footprint, adopt new technology and invest in new proptech companies through its venture arm, New Valley Ventures, the company said in a statement. New Valley Ventures recently announced an investment of unspecified size in Bilt Rewards, a company that creates loyalty and rewards credit card programs aimed at renters in complexes owned by corporate landlords like AvalonBay Communities.
The move comes as Coldwell Banker’s annual “A Look at Wealth” report named Boston one of the hot markets for luxury homebuyers, noting that the net worth of Americans with $5 million or more in assets and cash grew 17 percent from 2019 to 2021 and that the number of non-single-family luxury homes sold in 2021 is expected to top out at 144 percent higher than 2019’s tally. And Advisors Living’s third-quarter report on the Boston-Cambridge-Somerville real estate market shows that the average price per square foot for the urban core is up 8.9 percent year-over-year.
“With a leading luxury brand and a comprehensive suite of technology-enabled services and investments, Douglas Elliman is well positioned to capitalize on opportunities in the large and growing U.S. residential real estate market. Following the spin-off, Vector Group’s separate tobacco and real estate businesses will be better positioned to execute their strategic plans to drive each company’s long-term success and unlock value for stockholders,” Vector Group President, CEO and Chairman Howard Lorber said in a statement.
If approved by regulators, Douglas Elliman will trade under the ticker symbol “DOUG.”
