“Today and at this segment of the market and these price points, there are no more boundaries,” said Jordan. “You know, I have sat and met with clients in Singapore, who have homes in London, New York, considering Florida or Switzerland.”
The Alexanders have already secured some big listings. At 432 Park Avenue — where Tal lives — they’ve taken over the marketing of the 96th-floor penthouse that Ryan Serhant had priced at $169 million last year. The new asking price is available upon request for the 8,255-square-foot (767-square-meter) home that’s owned by billionaire Saudi developer Fawaz Alhokair.
Official also has the $135 million listing of 281 Park Avenue South, the commercial building at the corner of 22nd Street that alleged scammer Anna Sorokin, known by her alias Anna Delvey, told potential investors would be the home of the social club she sought to open.
Raised in Miami, the brothers watched their father, an Israeli immigrant, build a luxury construction and development business. The pair moved to New York after college to begin their own real estate careers, with Oren starting at Elliman in 2008 and Tal joining later. Keeping up a busy schedule of parties and travel helped them cultivate clients, just as the residential market began digging out of the financial crisis and tech and finance industries began minting more billionaires.
The pair hasn’t shied away from heralding their record-setting deals in the press and on social media, although they say they’re careful not to disclose the names of their clients who want discretion.
The brothers’ departure from Elliman has spurred speculation about why they would leave the brokerage that built their careers. The Alexanders and their executive team said Elliman tried to get the pair to stay, given that their team was responsible for 3.3% of the brokerage’s $51 billion in 2021 sales.
“Why would the top, the number one team for the last three years in a row, probably in the prime of their career, be forced out of a firm? That doesn’t make any sense to me,” Tal Alexander said on the call from St. Tropez with his brother.
An Elliman spokesperson said the company wishes the Alexanders well in their new endeavor.
Starting New
The Alexanders and their co-founders had considered seeking investors, but ultimately turned to Side, a white-label real estate technology company, to provide the firm’s back-end systems. Side generally gets 10% of those agents’ commissions, but Official is its own brokerage, paying an annual fee to Side and free to walk away at any time.
“We pay them the same way that we would pay for Salesforce, or we would pay for LinkedIn Pro, or we would pay for Slack,” said Oge, Official’s president and chief brand officer who led Elliman’s marketing operations from 2014 to 2016.
The Alexanders aren’t the only younger real estate agents who’ve built a brand on the strength of their presence in the press and on social media and left behind a traditional brokerage to found their own firm. After nearly a decade of appearing on Bravo’s “Million Dollar Listing New York,” Ryan Serhant, 38, departed Nest Seekers International in 2020 to launch his self-named New York and South Florida brokerage.