News broke over the holidays that Town & Country Real Estate, a homegrown real estate firm, is partnering with William Raveis, which is among New England, South Carolina and Florida’s largest privately held, family-owned real estate brokerages.
“We will bring another level of service to the Hamptons that nobody else has,” William (Bill) M. Raveis Jr., chairman and CEO of Wiliam Raveis Real Estate, tells Behind The Hedges in a recent interview.
“We have a mortgage company, an insurance company, and a title company, which is different than everybody else there. Everybody else on the island has no mortgage insurance, we have that component,” he explains. “We have a whole financial services that does not exist in, in the Hamptons or North Fork because nobody has it.”
William Raveis, which celebrates 50 years in business, boasts a growing network of 4,500 agents. Awarded Top Brokerage in the U.S. in 2023 by Inman, the company is said to be “aggressively pursuing growth opportunities with future acquisitions in the pipeline across the Florida and Southern regions as well as in the Northeast” over the coming months
William Raveis has offices in some of the wealthiest parts of the Northeast, including Palm Beach, as well as stops in between. There are eight offices in affluent Westchester County and an office on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, but the Hamptons remained somewhat elusive.
With the Town & Country merger, “all the dots are connected,” Raveis says. “I’ve been looking to do this for a long time.”
The partnership quells a 10-year quest for him.
There was an office in Quogue for a time, opened by one of his agents from New Canaan, Connecticut, who sold a house to Eli Manning there.
Raveis connected with Town & Country founder and CEO Judi Desiderio and they hit it off. “She and I, we’re sort of cut from the same cloth, if you will. She’s an entrepreneur. She’s done a marvelous job with her business. I have great admiration for her,” he says.
Discussions took place over two years, with both parties visiting the other’s locations several times. “She wanted to make sure it was the right fit for her company,” he says.
With offices across the Hamptons and on the North Fork, Town & Country has served the East End since 2005. Desiderio and Janet Hummel, the managing partner, will stay on as partners, along with more than 150 sales agents.
“We’re very excited about this new partnership with William Raveis — the brand synonymous with luxury real estate,” Desiderio told Hedges after the announcement. “The partnership brings William Raveis to the Hamptons and North Fork and William Raveis brings to Town & Country over 140 offices from Maine to Palm Beach. Their offices are everywhere our clients are. Janet and I are partners in this new venture and look forward to the limitless growth for our associates.”
The joint venture merger benefits entities. “She’s going to have another level of services that she didn’t have before and we are connecting all these dots and so it’s a great match for us and a great match for her,” Raveis says.
The two brokerages had many similarities.
“We’re a family business and she basically treats her company as her family,” he says, noting that they are the only major real estate family business in the Hamptons and on the North Fork.
A Connecticut native whose father was a bricklayer, Raveis comes from humble beginnings. He first worked for United Technology in Stratford as a systems analyst, then in the same role at Westinghouse International in New York, before becoming a supervisor for system design and analysis.
In 1974, he borrowed $2,000 from a bank and launched the WilliamRaveis Real Estate in an office above a grocery store. Within 10 years, he established a mortgage company, an insurance agency and an award-winning relocation business.
Five decades later, the firm focuses on high-end real estate with a luxury property division and built a program to service the high-end real estate, yet still maintain its family business style.
His sons Chris, 52, and Ryan, 47, grew up in the business, and now serve as co-presidents of the company which has been acquiring other firms in top luxury markets along the East Coast, including Jordan Real Estate, an established boutique brokerage serving Nantucket for 32 years last month.
“We’re not a Wall Street company, we’re a family business,” and it’s personalization, he says, that sets them apart. “I know our agents, my son Ryan knows our agents, my son Chris knows. We’re personally involved with helping agents build their business and to become successful.”
He has certainly figured out the formula and he sees it as his job to help William Raveis agents.
“When it was me, a phone and a desk above a grocery store 50 years ago, I said to myself — I’m looking out the window — and I said, ‘Well, how do I make money here?’ I said to myself, ‘Well, if the agent makes money, I make money. If they make more money, I make more.’ So we built a system in which we become the operating partner for sales associates,” he explains.
“Our job is to help them become successful because if they’re successful, we are. Whereas, Wall Street, rightly, looks out for shareholders … I look out for the people who work for us. Big difference.”
Following the announcement, the reception has been enthusiastic, not only from the Town & Country team but also from agents who are inquiring about switching to the brokerage.
He firmly believes it is because of what they can offer agents. “We have an array of services, whether it be our technology and our marketing that is different than everybody else’s,” Raveis says. “We spend millions and millions of dollars upgrading all technology, such as Raveis365, a comprehensive mobile real estate platform that unites the complete set of home-selling tools on one mobile platform. It’s one-of-a-kind, developed in collaboration with Microsoft.
In the Hamptons, the newly merged brokerages will be offering something new too — the Elite Concierge Service, which we will help people move in.
“We will help them renovate their houses, we will help them find locksmiths, things of that. I go to Four Seasons and they have this concierge service for people who will visit all the time and it dawned on me, why can’t we do the same thing in real estate?
Why can’t we give them an extraordinary amount of services?”
“First, I think ‘25 is going to be an outstanding year,” he says. “What we’ve been doing now, because of all of the logistics now with the National Association Realtors and the suits and stuff, with the buyer agreements here and the seller agreements here, we have now an opportunity to sell,” noting, “The inventory is starting to build” in all markets.
“If you look at Palm Beach right now, you have inventory that’s over almost six months old. That’s a normal market,” which he says leads to an active market. “We’re gradually getting back to where we were three, four years ago.”
This article appeared in Behind The Hedges’ January 2025 edition inside Dan’s Papers. Click the link to read the full digital edition.
