Though it’s only been a few weeks since Jessy Fingleton opened Au-Delà Real Estate, a boutique real estate brokerage in East Hampton, her staff has already quadrupled in size.
The agency name, Fingleton explains, comes from her working philosophy: going above and beyond for clients.
“And au-delà means ‘beyond’ in French,” says Fingleton, who began her real estate career in 2018 at Douglas Elliman and moved over to Compass in 2022.
“I’ve always been that entrepreneurial type,” Fingleton says. “My husband and I own an electrical contracting business for about 20 years. I do like being my own boss.”
Working in bigger corporate agencies, Fingleton felt she couldn’t give the personalized service she thought her clients deserved.
“I’m able to serve my clients a lot better,” she says. “For example, if I have a long time client and I want to give back to them, and say thank you when I do a deal, I have control over the commission I charge them. I can give them a little bit of a break. When I was with corporates, I wasn’t able to do that. I had to ask permission. I just enjoy being able to make those decisions on my own and I don’t have to beg to do a favor for somebody or anything like that.”
Transparency, Fingleton say, is key to the ethos at Au-Delà.
“That is highly important as it helps me be honest with the agents who come work for me as well as help us be honest with our clients,” she says.
An All Female Staff
When she opened Au-Delà Real Estate in January, Fingleton started on her own.
“In real estate, it’s very much about timing,” she says. “Not everybody can just drop what they’re doing and come.”
Since then, Clare Ambrose, her partner for the past five years, has joined the firm, as have Gina Rose, an agent who’s been with Fingleton for the past couple years, and Dana Hilbert, a brand new agent who is learning from the ground up.
Over the next couple of months, Fingleton hopes to bring in a couple more people.
“But slow grow would be fine for me — you don’t want to get too big too quickly,” Fingleton says. “There’s no manual on how to open up your own brokerage. It took me a good 9 months to a year to figure out the steps in order to do this. There’s always bound to be some growing pains and learning curves and I want to iron out those kinks before I have a ton of agents underneath me.”
Though she is happy to support other women, Fingleton is not committed to an all-female staff — forever.
“It’s just the way it worked out for now,” says Fingleton, adding that having similar personal lives — both Ambrose and Fingleton have self-employed husbands and kids around the same ages — has helped cement their relationship on both a personal and professional level. “If one of the kids was sick, I’d say, I’m just going to stay home today. And it was kind of an ease and a flow to all that.”
For Fingleton, real estate doesn’t have to be a cut-throat business.
“I’m like a cheerleader: I want everybody to do well,” she says. “There’s more than enough money out here to make everybody happy and get everybody a good living.”
For her part, Hilbert, who has had her real estate license for a few years, says she was put off by the big corporate agencies and pursued other avenues until now.
“At Au-Delà, this sense of trust was formed: we are in this together,” says Hilbert, whose family goes back multiple generations in Southampton. “And with that, I look forward to expanding my business in a supportive environment with other women who I have known for years from my community.”
Small, Local and Dedicated
For the most part, the team currently works between Westhampton Beach and Montauk in the Hamptons, as well as communities throughout the North Fork.
“There’s a saying in real estate: ‘Keep real estate local,’” says Fingleton. “I do like to stick to what I know and I’d rather refer out a client to an agent in an area I’m not familiar with rather than trying to guide them and do that wrong.”
At Au-Delà, most of the brokerage’s families have been out in the East End for many years and feel distinctly dedicated to the area and its residents.
“We all feel the same way – especially with the way the market is going – we’re trying to basically protect our locals, make sure they’re not taken advantage of,” Fingleton says.
Though lots of people seem to put a lot of faith in brand name agencies, Fingleton contends that those larger agencies focus a lot on marketing meetings and technological advances.
“It’s great and all but sometimes it doesn’t fit for our area,” she says. “It’s meant for nationwide kind of sales. And we want to home in on local: local history, local people.”
Whether it’s working with buyers, sellers, rentals, tenants, landlords, or commercial real estate, Au-Delà will always look out for their clients’ best interests.
“We’ve always done that,” Fingleton says. “But I think that working for ourselves and being able to call the shots – where we had to ask permission for in the past – that’s going to be able to help us even more with our clients.”
Boutique brokerages are making a comeback, Fingleton predicts.
“People are looking for that more personalized service that they’re just not able to get from the big brokerages,” she says. “That’s not saying that no agents in other big brokerages give the customer service that we give. I don’t think it’s being pushed as much as we would being a smaller brokerage.”
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