Los Angeles’ boutique brokerage landscape has a new entrant in former “Buying Beverly Hills” cast members Jon Grauman and Adam Rosenfeld’s new brokerage, Resident.

The duo, along with Grauman’s wife and now Resident CEO Lauren Grauman, left The Agency to launch the brokerage on Monday, backed by real estate platform provider Side.

“The ethos of the new company that we’ve created is one centered around the client and the client experience,” Jon Grauman told The Real Deal on Tuesday. “It’s less about the properties that we sell and more about the people that live in them. The branding is going to be edgy and editorial and very much driven by fashion, music and culture.”

The new brokerage launched with over $900 million in inventory, with the trio bringing about 15 agents and five staff members to Resident. While the plan is to begin recruiting, it will be a measured approach.  

“We’re not looking for bodies,” Grauman said. “This isn’t going to be a big-box brokerage. That’s not what we’re looking to create.”

From a business standpoint, the entrepreneurial move makes sense for talent retention as mega teams grow, according to Rosenfeld.  

“An agent [on a team] is essentially paying two splits. One to the parent company and one to the team and that makes it difficult to retain top-end talent,” Rosenfeld said. “The agents that have decided to come work with you like partners in a sense, become like family and we have an obligation to them. For that reason, this was a move that made a lot of sense for us, and I could see a lot of teams doing the same.” 

Industry headwinds

Resident launches during a rugged stretch for the broader industry. High interest rates, Measure ULA and January’s wildfires have proved headwinds.

The launch is “not something we really timed,” Rosenfeld said. “If you look at the market now, in a lot of ways it’s not a great time. We’ve been at an amazing company. For me, you get to a point where you almost feel like if you’re not growing, you’re stagnant. And we didn’t want to be stagnant.”

Even still, both Rosenfeld and Grauman described their departure as bittersweet.

“This is the only move we would have made to leave The Agency,” Rosenfeld said. “I thought that company would potentially be where I would be forever. I have so much respect for Mauricio [Umansky], Billy [Rose] and Rainy [Hake Austin] and the agents and the culture there. I’m going to miss it tremendously.”

Umansky, who is co-founder and CEO of The Agency, called the duo a “joy” to work with over the years in a statement provided to TRD. 

“They’ve made significant contributions to our Beverly Hills office and helped shape the collaborative culture we’re so proud of,” Umansky said. “While we’re always sad to see great people move on, we’re incredibly proud of everything they’ve accomplished and wish them nothing but continued success as they move out of the area and take advantage of this opportunity to start a multi-market boutique brokerage of their own.”

Business plans

The multi-pronged growth strategy has Resident currently in about 3,000 square feet of office space in Beverly Grove.

Grauman projected an additional office in Napa Valley could occur as early as the summer. It’s a market he and his wife are familiar with, and the plan would be to open an office there.

Rosenfeld said after Napa, he could see Resident expanding into Montecito, although the timing on that isn’t solidified.

Asked whether Resident could cross state lines, Grauman said, “I’d like to try to walk before we can run.”

“As a real estate agent, we wear a lot of different hats, but the job at its core is being a local market expert,” Grauman said. “You have to have a real presence in the markets that you serve, so I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves by crossing state lines. Right now, I would say our focus is going to remain on California.”  

Resident joins a high-end market in Los Angeles that is defined not just by corporate brokerages, but boutiques that have beaten down a path of their own.  

As a result, the founders of Resident see plenty of runway for their own business.

“As competitive as this business is, in general, I don’t think we’re looking to compete with the Carolwoods or the Beverly Hills Estates of the world,” Grauman said. “This is an industry where everybody can win. It’s not a zero-sum game. We’re just looking to take what we’ve spent years building out and doing it on our own with full autonomy.”

In some ways, the launch underscores the state of the brokerage business in which consolidation is common, prompting some agents to splinter off on their own. 

“The reality is we’ve been in a very challenging, high-interest rate environment for three-plus years now and the [National Association Realtors] settlement just added insult to injury,” Grauman said. “A number of these larger companies paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in that settlement at a time when their margins were already razor thin. So in the wake of that, consolidation, mergers and acquisitions are going to be a big part of the future of this industry and I think that the byproduct of that will be you will likely see more boutique brokerages like our own in higher-end markets like L.A. and New York and Miami.”

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