A pair of former Vanguard Properties executives are moving the team to Germany-based brokerage Engel & Völkers.
Robert Brisbane will serve as regional president of the luxury agency’s San Francisco Bay Markets, while Randy Romero will serve as manager of the San Francisco Castro office. At Vanguard, Brisbane served as vice president and broker of record, while Romero served as sales manager.
During Brisbane’s tenure at Vanguard, sales exceeded $1 billion. Romero has been in the industry for 23 years.
Engel & Völkers has acquired Bay Area talent as it expands in Northern California. Tracy McLaughlin, a top Marin County broker, left The Agency last year to work as a global real estate consultant. Taso Tsakos and Keri O’Reilly, who also worked at The Agency, join E&V as managing partners.
➤ The Joseph Sabeh Group in Fremont has joined its Golden Gate Sotheby’s International Realty in the East Bay. The origins of The Joseph Sabeh Group begin with founder Joseph Sabeh Sr., who started his own brokerage business in 1980, operating exclusively in Fremont. The brokerage rose to fame when Sabeh started catering to and selling to high-end clients. Today, the family legacy is carried on by Joseph Sabeh Jr. and his team, which includes Monica Pokorny and Romina Oviedo .
Prior to joining Sotheby’s, Joseph Sabeh Jr. was Chief Executive Officer of Executive Home Realty for 10 years and a realtor for the company since 2000. Pokorny has been with Sotheby’s for six years and previously spent two years at Executive Home. Oviedo spent a little over a year at Sotheby’s and, prior to that, spent six years in various roles in the US Soccer Association.
According to data compiled by Sotheby’s, the team ranks among the top 100 in sales ($274 million) in 2021 and 2022.
➤Jessica Grimes will join Sereno from Christie’s International Real Estate and will lead the strategic growth and marketing of Sereno’s expansion into San Francisco, Marin County and wine country.
Prior to joining Sereno, Grimes was Chief Marketing Officer of Pacific Union International, a former Christie’s affiliate in San Francisco. During her tenure, the brokerage’s sales grew from $2.2 billion to more than $14 billion in 2017, making it the fifth largest real estate firm in the United States. When Pacific Union was acquired by Compass in 2018, Grimes served as Compass California’s chief marketing officer until 2021, when she transitioned to head marketing for the Compass team.
➤The agency is hiring Daniel Hershkowitz as senior director of risk management. He will lead sales leadership efforts across California with an initial focus on Northern California, San Diego, Orange County and the Coachella Valley.
Hershkowitz has spent the past five years at Compass as director of risk management. Prior to that, he was a managing broker at Vanguard Properties. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the California Association of Realtors and was past President of the San Francisco Association of Realtors.
➤ Independent agency City Real Estate has merged with another independent agency, Polaris Realty. Both City and Polaris have partnered with Side, a San Francisco-based white label brokerage. In a statement, City founder David Cohen said the merger would allow City Real Estate to continue operating under its name and allow it to grow faster. The City and Polaris teams have closed 324 deals worth $541 million in 2022. Cohen, who founded City in 2018, has himself sold more than $100 million in real estate in each of the past four years and has over $1 billion in career sales. According to a report by RealTrends, City Real Estate ranked 23rd among deals in California, while Polaris was ranked 83rd.
