Mauricio Umansky Clarifies the Rumors About the Agency Being for Sale
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills husband held nothing back while giving an update on his growing real estate empire.
Since founding his boutique brokerage firm The Agency in 2011, Mauricio Umansky is solidly amongst the who’s who of Southern California real estate bigwigs. Just this month he was named one of Hollywood Reporter's Top 30 brokers in L.A. (as were several other familiar Bravo faces!), but amidst such rapid growth and expansion — he’s up to nearly 600 employees and aggressively expanding into new territories — The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ husband is often the recipient of widespread rumors regarding his company’s success, future and even his own personal dealings.
In a recent interview with Inman Luxury Connect, Kyle Richards’ husband laid out his (brutally honest!) truth on a variety of topics, check out his top talking points below.
About those agent churn rumors—how many have actually left?
Addressing the notion that big name brokers were leaving The Agency for other brokerage firms (namely Compass), Mauricio said: “When we started our company… we never gave a s--t about how many agents we would have. We switch out non-producing agents for producing agents. So if you didn’t perform, you didn’t have a chance to be at The Agency… One of the things that’s being completely misreported is that people keep talking about how we’ve lost 45 agents. But what is not being spoken about is how we’ve gained 155 agents in the last 12 months, and we have a net gain of 110. Look, we’re not immune to losing agents. We’re not immune to the Compass lure of money. We’ve lost some good agents. Out of the 45 agents that we’ve lost, I think we’ve probably lost six good ones. Okay. The other 40, quite frankly — and I don’t like to talk bad about people — but I don’t give a s--t about. They actually opened up space for us to be able to bring in those 110.”
And, he sure did have a few things to say about that Compass rivalry
When asked what he thought about Compass’ reportedly aggressive broker recruiting tactics… Mauricio was decidedly blunt. “They’re totally breaking the rules… They’re not playing a fair game… They don’t care if they make money. Robert Reffkin has made it very clear he doesn’t give a s--t if he makes money. He just wants to gain market share. How do you run a proper business where you just don’t care if you make money? It’s just impossible.”
Not surprisingly, Mauricio has big plans for The Agency’s future
“We want to continue to grow. Within our own markets we’re already super strong, which is basically Southern California. We want to see further growth in Pasadena. We want to see further growth in Newport, which are kind of newer offices. We want to see further expansion into other cities… We are launching our franchise division. We already have a few franchises. We really want to expand into other states primarily through franchising. I don’t want to get into operating in other states myself.”
And he’s quick to dispel those rumors that his company is for sale
“We don’t know where they come from. We don’t understand it. We’re not for sale. On the contrary, we see what’s happening in the world as an amazing opportunity for us. If anything, we want to be acquirers.”
Mauricio also addressed, his recent lawsuit, which you can read more about here and where his feud with brother-in-law Rick Hilton stands today, which you can read about here.
