One Miami real estate firm acquired another. And it’s just the beginning
While some real estate firms are contracting, at least one local brokerage is expanding.
RE/MAX Advance Realty acquired RE/MAX Oceanside Realty on Friday, expanding into North Miami, said Anthony Askowitz, broker and owner of RE/MAX Advance Realty. The Oceanside Realty office at 2108 NE 123rd St. will continue to be leased. RE/MAX Advance Realty now has a total of three locations, including South Miami and Kendall with 155 agents.
“It’s about covering all of Miami. And we’re not done. We’d like to go to Broward, Homestead and the Keys. It’s about economy to scale,” Askowitz said.
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Askowitz has his reasons for expanding to North Miami — he wants to attract new agents based out of Broward or Miami Beach that may want to work in North Miami as opposed to South Miami or Kendall.
“This makes us more appealing to other agents,” he said.
Luis and Deborah Padilla, the former owners of RE/MAX Oceanside, will join RE/MAX Advance Realty as agents. Luis will also continue in his role as the 2020 president-elect of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals, or NAHREP. The couple opened the firm in 2006 and had grown to a total of five agents at the time of the sale.
Askowitz credits his expansion to a team of top-producing agents. The Padillas rake in multimillion-dollar sales, he said. He can afford to expand because his agents continue to close sales.
“It’s quality versus quantity,” Askowitz said. “If you look at the 2008 crisis, the real estate agents that were beginners were wiped out. Some mid-level agents were also wiped out because they stopped marketing themselves. But the top agents came out of that well, many making a name for themselves in the industry.”
RE/MAX, or Real Estate Maximums, is a Denver-based franchise company established in 1973. It has about 6,800 offices worldwide in approximately 100 countries. It must approve every acquisition between branches. Askowitz said he got the corporate blessing when he began working on the deal five months ago.
This story was originally published May 6, 2020 at 7:00 AM.
