SWAMPSCOTT – In one of the year’s biggest real estate mergers on the North Shore, Sagan Realtors of Swampscott and Harborside Sotheby’s International Realty in Marblehead, are joining forces.
The new company, Sagan Harborside Sotheby’s International Realty, will be led by Phyllis Sagan who founded her firm in 1983.
“The goal is to grow our company and become one of the strongest real estate firms in the area,” she said. “We’ve both been very strong players in the market, but this will give us another growth spurt.”
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Sagan said she had $107 million in sales last year, while Harborside Sotheby’s did $95 million in volume. The combined firm will have 75 sales agents. They will each keep their offices in the two communities.
The impetus for the merger, Sagan said, was to have a global presence. Sotheby’s is worldwide and it will help them secure buyers and sellers all over the globe, she said.
“Sotheby’s is well known throughout the U.S. and has many offices overseas,” she said. “We will still be considered a local, independent firm, and the combination will provide us with the very best marketing exposure possible for our buyers and sellers. Our goal is expand our services in Essex county.”
Sagan Realtors’ Shari Sagan McGuirk and Julie Sagan will become partners in the new firm along with Michael Cannuscio, Matthew Dolan, and Richard McKinley, former owners of Harborside.
“We were two similarly-sized companies that were looking for an opportunity to grow,” Cannuscio said. “We’ve known each other for nearly two decades and we were competitions. But in this industry you must be cooperative to help each other sell homes. We have similar business philosophies and a core group of great agents and wanted to come together to form an even better company affiliated with Sotheby’s.”
In addition to selling in Swampscott and Marblehead, each other of the firms have been doing business in Lynn, Salem, Nahant and Beverly. They will now extend their reach to more North Shore communities, they said.
Cannuscio said they face competition from Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage and William Raveis Real Estate.
The merger comes as sales of single-family homes through the end of February in Essex county reached 732, up from 702 for the same period last year, a 4 percent hike, according to The Warren Group, the Boston real estate tracker.. At the same time, median sales prices swelled to $399,950, an increase of nearly 4 percent from a year ago when the mean was $385,375.
“The team is very excited about the merger,” said Sagan. “We are thrilled for our sellers who will get even more coverage than they’ve gotten in the past.”
