Nick Segal
Today San Francisco-based luxury independent brokerage Pacific Union International formally introduced its brand into Southern California and announced that Nick Segal, co-founder of Los Angeles boutique Partners Trust, will be named president of Pacific Union L.A.
Over the past 14 months, Pacific Union has been making a series of market share grabs in SoCal through acquisitions, including merging with L.A. indie firms John Aaroe Group and Partners Trust, and upping its investment in Gibson International, another L.A. firm, to a majority stake in December. This week, the three companies will all be re-branded as Pacific Union International.
The Pacific Union SoCal operation, which Segal calls “a dream team” of 900 real estate professionals in 20 offices across greater Los Angeles, will cover the areas of Malibu, Beverly Hills, Downtown, the Westside, Northeast L.A. and the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys. In 2017, the Pacific Union SoCal firms had a combined $6.8 billion sales volume, and as such, Pacific Union is claiming it will become the largest independent brokerage in L.A.
Pacific Union, which also merged with Empire Realty Associates in the East San Francisco Bay Area in October, now has 51 offices throughout Northern and Southern California and is projecting sales volume totaling $18 billion for 2018.
With John Aaroe announcing his retirement from the industry in September, Segal was the natural choice for president of Pacific Union L.A., said Pacific Union CEO Mark McLaughlin. In 2009, along with F. Ron Smith, Richard Stearns and Hugh Evans, Segal founded Partners Trust, which booked $2.47 billion in sales volume in 2016.
Segal, who described Pacific Union’s L.A. launch as a “truly historic move,” told Inman that the company is looking at new off-market listing opportunities.
“We’re exploring innovative ways to further market our properties before they go into the MLS. With our network of 900 plus real estate professionals across 20 offices in Los Angeles alone, 1,700 professionals throughout California … we have an opportunity to create an off-market platform that matches buyers and sellers faster,” Segal said.
“We’re already using our private social enterprise network ‘The Loop’ and many of our professionals actively pre-market properties via the company website, but there’s an opportunity to do more and create something that the marketplace hasn’t seen yet.”
To introduce the Pacific Union brand to the L.A. market, the company is also launching a $1 million integrated multimedia campaign titled “Watch What We Do Next,” along with a new website, pacificunionla.com.
PacificUnionLA.com homepage
The company, which has invested heavily in marketing to international clients, just launched a number of websites worldwide translated into 20 languages including Arabic, Russian and Portuguese.
