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Top New York City broker Lisa Simonsen has left Douglas Elliman and joined Brown Harris Stevens, CoStar News first reported on Tuesday.
Bess Freedman | Brown Harris Stevens
Simonsen is one of the top 75 individual brokers in New York City, according to RealTrends, and is ranked among the top 0.5 percent of brokers in the U.S. by gross commission income (GCI). She has closed more than $2 billion in sales volume during her two-decade career.
“Lisa Simonsen is recognized and respected throughout the industry for her business savvy, consummate professionalism and seamless integration with a modern lifestyle,” Brown Harris Stevens CEO Bess Freedman said in a statement. “We’ve admired her professional interactions and success for quite some time and are thrilled to welcome Lisa and her team to our family.”
Simonsen said the firm’s reputation and tools attracted her to the brand after spending nearly 18 years at Douglas Elliman.
Lisa Simonsen | Courtesy of Lisa Simonsen
“Brown Harris Stevens has a solid reputation for luxury, and for providing innovative tools and resources to its agents and, in turn, the high-net-worth buyers and sellers that they represent,” Simonsen said in a statement. “We are excited that our domestic and international clients are poised to benefit from this ingenuity and from the firm’s sophisticated brand.”
Simonsen has represented a number of high-profile transactions and clients over the course of her career, including the $20 million sale of the Abi Chelsea Penthouse at 455 West 19th Street, which broke a record for price per square foot on a boutique new development project when it sold at $5,650 per square foot in 2021.
Thus far in 2024, Simonsen has sold more than $200 million in listings. She is also licensed in Florida and California.
Simonsen counts journalist and host of The View Lisa Ling among her clients, who said of the broker, “There’s no one in New York that I’d rather work with.”
The luxury broker also regularly serves as a market expert to print, online and broadcast news outlets, including Good Morning America and The Today Show. Simonsen has also appeared on two seasons of the real estate reality TV series Kendra Sells Hollywood.
In 2022, Simonsen was named one of New York’s top 20 agents by The Hollywood Reporter, and one of Variety Magazine’s “Showbiz Real Estate Elite.”
Correction: This story was updated after publishing to correct that Lisa Simonsen is ranked within the top 0.5 percent of brokers in the U.S., not the top 0.05 percent, due to a typo in a press release.
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