New Orleans real estate brokerage firm McEnery Residential has acquired Delery Comarda brokerage, combining two small real estate companies specializing in the higher end of the New Orleans metropolitan housing market. This is the latest sign of industry consolidation.
The deal will combine McEnery's 62 agents with Delery Comada's 23 agents. The companies say they have brokered an average of $350 million to $450 million in residential real estate transactions annually over the past three years. Financial terms of the deal between the two private companies, which was signed last week, were not disclosed.
Delery Comarda was founded nearly 10 years ago by sisters Joyce Delery and Anne Comarda. Prior to the sale, the property was operated as a New Orleans-area franchise of Engel & Völkers, a large German real estate brokerage firm.
The Delery Comarda deal was announced last month to replace Rutter & Bloom, one of Louisiana's oldest and largest real estate brokerages, with the New York City-based technology company and largest residential real estate brokerage in the United States. This follows the sale to Compass Real Estate, Inc.
The Uber of real estate
The trends driving Blum's deal with the latter, as real estate brokerages expand their scale and focus more on technology, are the trends driving the latter's deal with Blum, including Parr, founder and owner of McEnery Company, the parent company of McEnery Residential. It's not what inspired Qu McEnery. He said it was to buy Delery Comarda.
Founded by a former Twitter engineer and two Wall Street bankers, Compass is a technology platform that has built a network of independent contractors through acquisitions and other deals over the past decade. Latter & Blum has 3,100 agents in four Gulf South states with sales of about $3.6 billion last year, and has already joined a network of 29,000 agents in 28 states. .
Compass has ambitions to become the Uber of the real estate market. By contrast, McEnery said his firm's acquisition of Delery Comalda is “a local marriage, and we're doubling down on our local efforts.”
McEnery predicts that the New Orleans market, which is fairly unique with its myriad historic neighborhoods and other features, won't lend itself as easily to technology-driven deals and lower fees as other metropolitan areas.
“Like everything else in New Orleans, real estate is unlike any other city,” said Joyce Delery, who will become principal associate broker at the integrated group. “Customers want to know that you know the differences between different areas and streets, and they want personalized service.”
Ann Comada said that New Orleans tends to reward long-term relationships more than other cities. She said she recently closed a purchase contract on the home of her client, who is the ninth member of her family she has worked with.
luxury housing market
Another bet is that the high-end market in which both companies operate is less vulnerable to the pressure to lower fees brought on by the shift to technology-driven trading.
McEnery primarily operates in Uptown, Garden District, Marigny and Bywater, while Delerie Comada is concentrated in Old Metairie, Lakewood, Lakeview and Lakeshore. The average selling price of the transactions handled by both firms was about $1 million, more than double the average for the metropolitan area.
McEnery's acquisition comes after a period of slump in overall residential real estate sales in New Orleans.
The average home sale price last year was $328,615, down 3.1% from the previous year's average, according to the New Orleans Metropolitan Association of Realtors. The number of homes sold was 12,235, a decrease of almost 20%.
However, higher end products on the market are usually more resilient.
Another factor driving consolidation in the real estate market is the recent settlement of a class action lawsuit by the National Association of Realtors, which is expected to change the way commissions are shared among agents.
It won't be clear until July how the new rules will work, but industry analysts say they are expected to give homebuyers and sellers more ability to negotiate lower fees.
“The type of people we work with see the value of the services we provide and see the results,” McEnery said. “They're not whining about one or two commission points.”
