The founder of indie brokerage The Address is leaving the agency he founded to focus fully on a new venture.
Troy Palmquist, the Ventura, California-based broker and Inman contributor who founded The Address in 2017, stayed on as its broker of record when it was sold in 2018.
The Address was sold to Corcoran Global Living in a deal announced last week that saw the agency’s five Southern California offices in Agoura Hills, Newport Beach, Oxnard, Malibu and Long Beach, along with its roughly 80 agents fall under the Corcoran Global Living banner.
Palmquist will also be departing The Address to focus on the launch of Doora Properties, a full-service brokerage and home-design firm.
Palmquist said he felt moved to launch into a new venture amid the upheaval of 2020 while working for The Address — on both a personal and societal level.
“[I began to] realize there was more to life than where I was at currently,” he said.
A July 2020 diagnosis of stage 2 Thyroid Cancer only strengthened that conviction.
“It’s not my company, I’m working for someone else, I’m not creating what I wanted to create,” he said. “In the midst of dealing with cancer, something so hard to comprehend in life, I decided I was going to push forward with trying to stay positive and keep my mind off the fact that there’s all this negativity going on in the world and in my body.”
“Getting cancer really said to me: It’s time to get back on your own journey,” he added.
Headquartered out of a furniture showroom in downtown Ventura where Palmquist works with his business partner, designer Antoinette Fargo, also an Inman contributor, Doora Properties functions as a brokerage and an interior design firm simultaneously, guiding buyers through the homebuying process and giving them the tools they need to design and furnish their new homes.
“In Ventura County, there’s not a big indie,” Palmquist told Inman. “I think there’s a need for indie brokers still.”
“[Doora is] a first of its kind vertically integrated real estate company,” Palmquist said. “Buy the house, design the home, buy the furniture, and turn the house into a home.”
With the Side-powered brokerage currently serving the Ventura area, Palmquist says he is aiming for steady growth and expansion to other states in the years to come.
“Scale out from here and scale up,” he said of their goals. “I’d love to see it in multiple states in a couple of years and have a good brand where we can make the Doora name a household name.”
“Nobody else is really doing that,” he added.