Chicago’s Vesta Preferred Regroups With $1 Billion Sales Goal

Vesta Preferred is making changes as it chases a goal to increase its sales volume to $1 billion by 2027, co-founders Brad Robbins and Grigory Pekarsky said Thursday.

Robbins was named the local brokerage’s CEO, and Pekarsky the head of sales. They started Vesta Preferred Realty in 2009 as two young brokers looking to “just sell stuff and break things,” Pekarsky said.

The firm hit $275 million in sales last year.

“You can still kind of tinker around and have a good time until you’re about a $100 million team,” he said. After 200 percent growth from 2023 to 2024, they thought: “OK, we’ve got to grow up here. We’ve got to put our operation to a very systematic, proper approach,” Pekarsky said.

Robbins had been handling much of the managerial work as Vesta nearly doubled the number of active agents up to 27 brokers moving into the start of the year, he said. Pekarsky admitted that managing and coaching is not his strong suit.

“I got awarded the most dramatic in the office. So, doesn’t typically mean I’m the best CEO, but I’m a great salesperson because I wear a lot of emotion on my sleeve,” Pekarsky said. He came in at No. 5 on The Real Deal’s ranking of Chicago’s top brokers last year.

Pekarsky’s cool-headed counterpart Robbins, on the other hand, is “a natural leader, a natural CEO,” Pekarsky said.

The change required Robbins to step back from sales, handing his book of clients over to Pekarsky and taking the helm as the brokerage tries to meet an interim goal of $500 million in total sales volume this year.

“It’s a little bittersweet because I’ve spent a long time creating those relationships,” Robbins said. “But the reality is, we had to make a decision. Do we want to be a jack-of-all-trades but master of none, or can we both be absolutely laser-focused on what we’re really, really great at?”

As he steps away from sales, Robbins will be focused on coaching the team’s new agents and streamlining operations to make sure nothing is missed as the company grows.

Their goal to become “the first $1 billion team in Illinois” is ambitious, and they have already begun breaking down what they need to get there, Pekarsky said.

He estimates that the team would need to close about 2,400 deals, given their average sale prices in the $400,000’s, which is lower than those of many other top luxury teams in Chicago. Pekarsky brought in $193.7 million in sales across 370 Cook County deals for an average sale price of $521,622 last year.

“We’re in the units business,” Pekarsky said, meaning they need to build “an operation of efficiency.”

“We have to grow into the western suburbs this year, then the northern suburbs, and then the northwest suburbs,” he said. “Because in regards to market cap, I think $500 million coming out of the city, $500 million coming out of the suburbs, right?”

They will start by opening an office in the wealthy western suburb of Naperville sometime this year, Pekarsky said.