I'm not sure what all of the commotion is about the Prudential sale and frankly don't feel it signifies anything more than a classic division sale/takeover. I have spent a fair bit of time watching the market and trying to figure out how the Greenwich CT real estate market is moving, but have yet to find anything that would bring up this trade. It has nothing to do with the Greenwich real estate market (obviously) and, in my opinion, shouldn't signal that big of a change in the overall real estate market.
For those of you who don't know the full story, Brookfield Residential Property Services purchased Prudential Real Estate and Relocation Services for $110 million.
Brookfield says that Prudential Real Estate brokerage affiliates will be able to continue to use the Prudential brand under the terms of their franchise agreement, until it expires. In 2008, when Brookfield acquired GMAC Real Estate all of those brokerages were rebranded as Real Living when their franchise agreements expired, so that will probably happen to Prudential Real Estate. This will take a lot of time for the franchise agreements to expire and for the powers at be to figure out the value in the Prudential brand.
On a national basis, the Real Living brand is not nearly as well known as Prudential and in Connecticut it is definitely not as well known as Prudential CT Real Estate. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. Brookfield has placed a lot of effort in building Real Living, so I'm expecting to see some of those Prudential buildings in Greenwich change over in the coming years.
