The owner of Brooklyn-based Engel & Völkers franchises is taking over the firm’s Manhattan shop.
Donald Brennan, an architect-turned-developer-turned-broker, bought the brokerage’s flagship office at 430 Park Avenue in a deal that includes its 45 agents, his spokesperson told The Real Deal on Monday. The outpost was the firm’s only corporate-owned office in the Americas.
Brennan is adding the Manhattan location to others already under his control, including offices in Brownstone Brooklyn and on the North Fork of Long Island. With the acquisition of the Manhattan office, Brennan will be the sole operator of the Engel & Völkers brand across the five boroughs.
Brennan said the deal, which he self-funded, came with a “mandate to expand” across the city, which he intends to uphold though he doesn’t yet have any specific growth plans in the works. He added that he plans to take a “hands-on” approach to leadership.
Brennan said he believes there’s room in the New York City market for a brand like Engel & Völkers to grow, pointing to its emphasis on collaboration across markets “over what feels like a little more guarded” attitudes from larger firms.
“The tools we have are as good, if not better than, what other brokerages out there have,” Brennan said. “I don’t personally get hung up on technology as the thing that helps advisers get more business… I’m a little bit more about the idea of service.”
Engel & Völkers placed 19th in TRD’s latest ranking of the top brokerages in Manhattan with $71 million in sell-side transactions last year. The firm has about 85 agents across Manhattan, Brooklyn and Long Island.
The office’s top team, the 12-person Mercedes Berk Team led by Noel and Elizabeth Mercedes Berk, notched more than $200 million in sales last year and ranked first among the brokerage’s leading cohorts. The team’s listings include a $3.5 million pad on West 25th Street and a $1.4 million co-op on the Upper East Side.
The brokerage opened its Manhattan office in 2014 with Stuart Siegel, now the CEO and president of the firm across the Americas, at the helm.
Engel & Völkers landed in Brooklyn when Brennan and his then-eponymous brokerage joined the firm in 2019 and gave it a foothold across Dumbo, Prospect Heights and Cobble Hill. Last week, Brennan expanded his reach to Park Slope by acquiring Dwell Residential, a 16-person boutique firm.
Brennan began his career as an architect at a small firm he founded with one of his siblings and later started buying up brownstones in Brooklyn and converting them into condos. In 2013, Brennan built three ground-up townhouses in Cobble Hill. For more than a decade, he ran his own boutique brokerage, which he launched with the aim of having his own agents to sell his properties.
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