Steven Kotler said Dallas is poised for a housing boom. The CEO of Douglas Elliman's western brokerage moved to Highland Park from Los Angeles last fall with his fiancée, Cale Brownstein, and their two puppies, Axl and Lola, to seize the opportunity. . The luxury broker's western region includes California, Colorado, Nevada and Texas, but North Texas shined the brightest. “This move was based solely on the idea that business in Dallas would grow significantly,” he says. “Dallas is the No. 1 city in the nation for office construction, so more people moving to Dallas means more homes people want to buy.”
Mr. Kotler is from New Jersey. His father worked on multifamily housing projects in New York City. In 1982, the young Kotler dropped out of Ithaca College his junior year to follow his father to Aspen to open Lucy's, a restaurant at the base of the famous Lucy's Run trail. However, I quickly realized that hospitality work in a small snow-capped town was not my speed. So he ventured to New York to become a broker.
He began his career at JI Sopher and Co., the largest rental brokerage in New York City at the time. In 1991 he joined Douglas Elliman, and a few months later Elliman acquired his JI Sopher Co., and Kotler was set up for immediate success.He found himself working in his niche luck He helped 50 companies reassign new employees, and his team of 12 brokers worked on 300 to 400 deals a year.
In 2005, Kotler got his big break in the form of the New York City apartment building 40 East 66th. He brokered the sale to Vornado for $158 million. The property had only 45 apartments, and based on price per unit, this was the largest sale of a New York multifamily property in history. Mr. Kotler then went to Elliman Chairman Howard Lorber and said, “I want to run an office.'' Mr. Lorber signed the contract and Mr. Kotler began operating his office. “It makes me want to do more,” Kotler says. “I always want to do something more difficult.”
Mr. Kotler built Elliman's California brokerage firm from an unknown player into a powerhouse in just 10 years. A year after joining Los Angeles, he helped orchestrate Elliman's acquisition of Beverly Hills competitor Telles Properties through an unsolicited offer. At the time of the acquisition, Elliman and Teles had combined sales in California of $4 billion. Douglas Elliman's 2023 total transaction value was $34.4 billion, with an average sales price of $1.58 million, in 10 states, Washington, D.C., the Bahamas, and other international territories.
His latest challenge is North Texas. “We may use the same strategy in California, but that hasn't been determined yet,” Kotler said.
He looks at the local market situation and expects the housing stock to start clearing. “I tried to buy crystal balls on Amazon, but they were all sold out,” he says with a laugh. “However, we are already seeing interest rates fall to the 5% range in some cases. We believe that once this number stabilizes at 5%, inventories will be released. Our forecast is that by the summer There will be a 50 basis point change by then and probably another 1 basis point change by the election.”
As the market stabilizes in the near term, Kotler looks to understand how his new home, Douglas Elliman, which has about 7,000 agents nationwide, can take market share from local brokerages. It is said that “If you look at how we grew in Beverly Hills, everyone said it would be hard to grow a business there, but that's a story we get told everywhere we go,” he said. say. “Dallas is not a short-term move for me. I'm looking to succeed even more than I did in California, and I'm here to make Elliman the best brokerage firm I've ever been.”
author
Ben Swanger is the Editor-in-Chief D CEObusiness title D Magazine. Ben manages the dallas 500, monthly…
