Many top brokers hopping firms this hectic summer cited wanting a bigger piece of the city’s new development action as a key motivation for jumping ship. And judging by the latest numbers from New York’s largest new development marketer, it’s easy to see why. Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group sold $3 billion worth of sales in 2014, the firm told The Real Deal today, buoyed by a flood of new inventory and sky-high prices.
It is the second consecutive year in the row that the firm, an arm of the Corcoran Group, has eclipsed the $3 billion mark. And as prices for new development units rise, Corcoran Sunshine said among homes it sold, the average sales price and average price per square foot, $4.6 million and $2,387 respectively, were the highest in the company’s 25-year history.
The firm “outperformed the new development market as a whole,” Kelly Kennedy Mack, Corcoran Sunshine’s president, said in a statement.
In fact, rising prices and a surge of new development is benefitting new development marketing firms across the board. Corcoran Sunshine is the busiest of the lot, with a roster of 2,722 units across 61 projects as of November, according to The Real Deal’s most recent ranking of new development marketing firms. Halstead Property Development Marketing was second with 2,241 units across 40 projects and Douglas Elliman Development Marketing ranked No. 3 with 2,121 units across 35 projects.
Some 6,500 units are set to hit the market in 2015, according to Corcoran Sunshine estimates. That’s more than double the 3,100 units launched last year in Manhattan. Developers haven’t faced such stiff competition since 2007, and some players predict a return to the lavish marketing and one-upmanship of the boom years, as TRD reported last month.
At Corcoran Sunshine’s annual awards party, held Jan. 29, the firm named the team marketing 30 Park Place – which includes Angela Babel, Angeli Dahiya, Sira Faye, Sabrina Radoncic and Loretta Shanahan-Bradbury – as the firm’s sales team of the year. The Silverstein Properties development, designed by Robert A.M. Stern, is 60 percent sold after launching this summer.