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The Halstead office in East Hampton Village.
Brown Harris Stevens, one of the biggest names in real estate on the East End, is absorbing Halstead under a restructuring plan by their parent company, Terra Holdings.
Terra Holdings, one of America’s largest privately held real estate services companies, acquired BHS in 1995 and Halstead in 2001. BHS will have six offices in the Hamptons and one on the North Fork under the new plan, and 55 offices total with 2,500 agents across four states.
At the beginning of the year, BHS moved out of its former Southampton Village office at 24 Main Street and moved into 31 Main Street, which had been a Halstead office since 2013. Halstead has one remaining Hamptons office at 2 Newtown Lane in East Hampton Village.
“While we had some overlapping markets, each company focused on different strengths,” BHS CEO Bess Freedman explained in an email. “Halstead built up a phenomenal NYC regional operation while BHS established a dominant luxury presence particularly in Manhattan, the Hamptons, Palm Beach and Miami.”
BHS absorbing Halstead was planned before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Ms. Freedman. “This restructuring has been in the works for some time, although the pandemic certainly helped to speed up the process,” she said. “The real estate landscape is changing and in order to stay competitive, brokerages must adapt. This new venture gives Brown Harris Stevens the full resources of Terra Holdings, and makes us bigger and stronger for the benefit of our agents and clients.”
The transition is being phased in, starting in New York City, where BHS will keep its headquarters at 445 Park Avenue.
The leadership team of both BHS and Halstead will be retained. Ms. Freedman oversees the team, including Hall F. Willkie, the president of BHS residential sales; Diane M. Ramirez, the current CEO of Halstead; Richard J. Grossman, the current president of Halstead; and Stephen G. Kliegerman, the president of Terra Development Marketing.
Ms. Freedman said BHS is extremely fortunate to be growing while other businesses have been forced to scale back or shut down during the pandemic. “We now have more agents in more regions and a more powerful marketing engine than ever before,” she said. “This is an exciting new era for BHS.”
