Brokerage Engel & Völkers Gives up on Hamptons Offices

Earlier this year, it seemed like things were pretty good for European brokerage Engel & Völkers. The company opened up a shiny new office in East Hampton and one of their brokers won a Rookie of the Year award. But apparently those leaps forward weren't enough to keep E&V from taking a few steps backwards. According to The Real Deal, "Nest Seekers International has acquired the former Southampton-based real estate flagship of" E&V. E&V higher-ups apparently dropped the bomb on employees last Friday, and a local E&V exec is supposedly "in talks on a potential new franchise to operate under a different brokerage flag."

So why'd E&V abandon ship? President of Saunders & Associates Andrew Saunders speculates that E&V's business model, which focuses on bringing in European buyers, wasn't practical. Says Saunders, "The idea that they could bring enough of them to really finance the operations of a real estate firm always seemed to be a questionable practice." Either way, auf Wiedersehen!