Christie’s International Real Estate has officially launched its own brokerage office and the top associates heading it up are far from strangers.
In June 2017 Christie’s International Real Estate (CIRE), the luxury real estate arm of Christie’s fine art auction house, announced it would be opening its first company-owned residential real estate brokerage office in New York City, ending its affiliation with luxury New York brokerage Brown Harris Stevens.
Today CIRE’s brokerage officially opened in Christie’s flagship U.S. auction house location at 20 Rockefeller Plaza and revealed that the Erin Boisson Aries team — the highest-earning team for Brown Harris Stevens in 2017 and the no. 2 team in New York City according to the Wall Street Journal’s list of “Top Manhattan Agents,” — has jumped ship and will be leading up CIRE’s fledgling firm.
CIRE, which has affiliates in 45 countries, expects to serve buyers and sellers of luxury real estate in the Hamptons and Brooklyn markets from its gallery-style NYC brokerage digs.
“I am humbled to join the 250-year-old auction house in representing New York’s greatest estates and most promising new development projects,” said Erin Boisson Aries, who was with Brown Harris Stevens for 10 years, and prior to that, with the Corcoran Group.
The Aries team has built a reputation for marketing new luxury developments in New York City, having recently completed the sell out of Foster + Partners’ 551 West 21st Street and the Neil Denari-deisgned HL23. Her team often works with developers from the inception of a scheme, Aries told Inman. The team, booking a sales volume of $450 million last year, works 50 percent on new developments and 50 percent with resale, and includes a marketing director, managing director, an associate broker and a research assistant.
Talking to Inman, CIRE CEO Dan Conn said the Aries team would be a boutique operation comprised of experts, just as Christie’s has experts in ceramic art or in the “Old Masters.”
“Whatever it is, that people are experts on … an important part of it is incredible attention to detail and data,” he said. “I am very protective of the Christie’s brand — when you are in a 250 year old business, you don’t run things like a startup.”