Two of Chicago’s largest brokerages have merged, creating the second-largest brokerage by sales volume in the city.
Baird & Warner acquired Dream Town Real Estate, the companies announced Thursday. Dream Town will become Baird & Warner, adding 400 agents to the latter's 3,000. It’s the largest acquisition the brokerage has made in its 170-year history, Baird & Warner confirmed.
The combined company will be led by Baird & Warner CEO Steve Baird and have close to 4,000 team members, including agents, loan officers and additional staff. Dream Town will retain all its existing offices, creating 36 Baird & Warner locations across Chicagoland.
Agents learned of the acquisition on Thursday.
The conversation on merging began less than six months ago, said Dream Town's founder, Yuval Degani, who will become president of Baird & Warner’s brokerage services, focusing on furthering the company’s corporate branding, social media, marketing, and strategic planning, and advancing the brand’s proprietary technology.
Despite media reports, Degani, who founded the brokerage in 1998, said the conversation had nothing to do with Compass acquiring @properties Christie’s International Real Estate in December.
“We've known each other for a while. … We talked a little bit more about what we're doing, and it just all of a sudden dawned on both of us that we both have strength in places that the other person had not yet developed,” Degani told Homes.com.
Companies underscore their independence
The merger is also a symbolic stake in the ground for the brokerages, which tout the fact that they are independent and privately owned. The combined company gives agents a “strong independent alternative” in Chicago, said Degani.
Laura Ellis, Baird & Warner's chief strategy officer, emphasized the battle many independent brokerages now face when competing with privately funded, public ones.
“The fact of the matter is that, ultimately, the decisions that are impacting those companies are driven in large part by profit margins and share prices," Ellis told Homes.com. "And many of those decisions are not made in the local market.”
The country’s largest brokerages ranked on RealTrends are publicly traded, such as ReMax, Redfin, Anywhere Real Estate (which owns Coldwell Banker, Sotheby’s International Realty, and Corcoran), eXp Realty, The Real Brokerage, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and Douglas Elliman. According to RealTrends, Baird & Warner is the country’s 34th largest brokerage, with a sales volume of $5.23 billion in 2024.
“Independent brokers aren't going anywhere. We've been beaten up over the last few years with all this crazy stuff going on in the market with the hedge fund-run companies and so forth,” said Ellis. “This puts us as the second-largest company with number of properties sold … We’re super excited.”
