Red Oak buys rival real estate brokerage
Red Oak Realty has acquired Marvin Gardens Real Estate to form what Red Oak says will be the largest independent real estate brokerage firm by transactions, though not necessarily by dollar volume, in western Contra Costa and Alameda counties.
Marvin Gardens was founded in 1977 and named after the Monopoly board game square you hit just before you turn the corner to the highestpriced stretch of squares running from Pacific Avenue to Boardwalk.
That’s the slice of the real realestate market Marvin Gardens serves.
“It’s a good neighborhood but not the ritziest,” said Todd Hodson, who has owned the company with his wife, Marion Henon, since 1989. “In the East Bay, we have a lot of highend properties, but we have been everyone’s real estate agents.”
Red Oak serves a similar market. Both companies sell houses with a median price of around
$900,000. The two independent firms have worked together on hundreds of deals over the years, where one firm represents the buyer and the other, the seller.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Red Oak has about 100 agents in two offices in Oakland and Berkeley and mainly serves south Berkeley and cities south to San Leandro. Marvin Gardens has 60 agents in four offices and mainly serves north Berkeley and cities north to Richmond, Hercules and Pinole. Red Oak has a new office under construction in Oakland.
“We overlap in Berkeley and Albany,” said Vanessa Bergmark, owner and CEO of Red Oak.
Hodson said the deal was motivated “somewhat but not completely” by a wave of mergers on the west side of the bay. Compass, a New York, venturefunded brokerage, acquired heavy hitters Paragon Real Estate Group, Pacific Union International and Alain Pinel between July 2018 and March 2019.
But Marvin Gardens had been considering partnerships for a number of years as a way to “provide great tools and services to our agents and clients,” Hodson said. “Our relationship with Red Oak goes back many years. Red Oak has younger, fresher leadership. We are going to stay on the management team to lend our experience and skills and grow Red Oak.”
Before the merger, the Grubb Co. was the biggest independent, non-franchised brokerage in the East Bay in both dollar volume and transactions, Bergmark said. The merger will make Red Oak and Marvin Gardens combined the biggest in transactions, she said, based on what she can tell from Multiple Listing Service data for the first half of this year.
“The Grubb Co.’s volume of business, in serving the highend luxury market, exceeds any brokerage firm in the East Bay,” said D.J. Grubb, owner of the Grubb Co. Of the merger, he added, “I think it’s wonderful. It consolidates two strong companies. This is a great celebration for the independent brokerage companies.”