HomeServices expands in New York suburbs

Just a few weeks into the year, local brokerages have been making deals.

Minneapolis-based HomeServices of America is getting a bite of the Big Apple with its purchase of Houlihan Lawrence, one of the biggest and oldest real estate firms in the northern suburbs of New York City. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Houlihan Lawrence was founded in 1888 and primarily serves the Westchester, Fairfield, Putnam, Dutchess, Orange and Ulster counties of New York and Connecticut with 1,300 sales associates in 30 offices. Last year the company closed $6.7 billion in sales volume.

With the transaction, HomeServices, a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate, has nearly 29,500 real estate agents and others in nearly 570 offices in 28 states. Last year, the company had more than $93 billion in residential real estate sales. As it does with all of its holdings, HomeServices will continue to operate the brokerage using its locally branded name and Houlihan Lawrence will be locally managed.

That deal followed an announcement that Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, which operates real estate franchises under the Berkshire Hathaway name, is entering the Manhattan market with a new brokerage called Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New York Properties. That operation will be led by Ellie Johnson, who managed the Upper East Side office for Sotheby's International Realty, for 11 years.

Also last month, Eden Prairie-based Re/Max Results showed it is digging deeper into the suburban luxury market with the acquisition of P.L. Dorn Company, a small but well-known brokerage based in Mendota Heights, an affluent first-ring suburb in the south metro.

Last year, the company's six agents made 127 deals worth $38.6 million, with an average sales price of $304,000. The average sales price across the Twin Cities metro was just shy of $275,000 last year, according to sales listed through the Regional Multiple Listing Service.

The Mendota Heights office will be led by Paul and Lisa Dorn and will operate as a branch of Re/Max Results, which has 35 offices throughout the greater Minneapolis area and Western Wisconsin.

P.L. Dorn was founded in 1988 by the husband-and-wife team, who specialize in the upper-bracket market for new and existing construction through the Twin Cities region.

John Collopy, Re/Max founder and CEO, noted that both companies have been in business three decades.

Before the Dorn acquisition, the company's most recent deal was the December 2015 purchase of Today's Realty in Hutchinson, Minn., which had an office of five agents.