Residential brokerage pounces on growth

SARASOTA — The Southwest Florida region's largest residential brokerage firm is getting even bigger.

Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate Florida parent NRT LLC announced Tuesday it acquired 60 new offices and more than 2,000 new real estate agents operating as Coldwell Banker United in Florida, Texas, North Carolina and South Carolina.

Coldwell Banker Residential will oversee the offices and more than 400 Florida agents from its Sarasota location as part of the deal. Each will now report to Clark Toole, president of Coldwell Banker Residential.

“From the standpoint of our footprint in Florida, this really helps us out,” Toole tells the Business Observer in an interview. “And they do a tremendous relocation business, too, so we're ecstatic.”

Coldwell Banker Residential will also directly oversee the offices added in the other states, Toole adds. In 2014, Coldwell Banker United generated sales volume of roughly $5.8 billion in more than 23,000 transactions. That amount of business ranked it 11th nationwide in sales volume, according to the 2015 REAL Trends 500 report.

Coldwell Banker Residential in 2014, by comparison, had 75 offices, about 4,800 agents and generated in excess of $12 billion in transactional volume

The Florida Coldwell Banker United offices, which will continue operating under that name, are located in Pensacola; Destin; Fort Walton Beach; Pensacola Beach; Gulf Breeze; and Niceville, among others.

“I am highly confident our growth with NRT will continue to provide real estate consumers with outstanding value and service,” says Coldwell Banker United founder Richard Smith in a statement.

NRT, the nation's largest real estate brokerage company with nearly 800 offices and 47,000 sales agents, is a subsidiary of Madison, N.J.-based Realogy Holdings Corp.