In a surprise move, the top real estate team on the barrier island just switched brokers.
After more than a dozen years of stellar success at Premier Estate Properties, where they sold the three most expensive homes on the island and did $296 million in business last year, Cindy O’Dare and Richard Boga have moved 2 miles south on A1A to join ONE Sotheby’s International Realty.
The pair signed a contract with ONE Sotheby’s Wednesday, after two months of increasingly detailed discussions, and are already conducting business from an expansive new suite of offices. Broker associate Kristin Dobson went with them, and O’Dare’s daughter, Lily O’Dare, has joined the team from within ONE Sotheby’s, where she has been a high-producing agent since 2020.
Like many successful agents, O’Dare and Boga have been wooed for years by other agencies trying to get them to jump ship, and several of the partners’ high-end clients have offered to back them in an independent venture, but they never paid much attention or thought seriously about making a move until recently.
“We started giving it more consideration in the past six months, mainly because we were being approached by such a flurry of people making us offers as Vero continues to gain national prominence,” O’Dare told Vero Beach 32963 on Saturday.
They settled on Sotheby’s for multiple reasons, including a wider, more streamlined referral network.
“Many of our clients own multiple homes and they say to us, ‘We are selling our house in Malibu or New York or Chicago, and we would like to list with you.’ But up until now that has been a piece of business we’ve lost because Premier didn’t have agents in those locations,” Boga said. “Now we can say, ‘Oh, you are moving to Chicago? Great, we have an agent in Chicago we can line you up with.’”
“Richard and I have always taken a concierge approach to our business. We want to take care of all our clients needs, and Sotheby’s will help us do that,” O’Dare said.
“In just the last couple of days, we have already had takers. We just sold a house here for a client who is moving to Maryland and within an hour of us speaking with Bobbie Holt [managing broker for ONE Sotheby’s Vero office], she had called a top agent up there and that agent was in contact with our sellers, working with them to find a great home in Maryland.”
“I think the Sotheby’s name is the most productive name in real estate,” Boga said.
“People everywhere associate it with luxury property. Many times in the past, we have had clients tell us they are giving us their business because they know us and like us, but that they usually go to Sotheby’s when they are buying or selling.
“A client asked us to help him sell his properties in Rancho Santa Fe, California, and Freeport in the Bahamas, and in both cases, when we interviewed local agents for him we ended up picking Sotheby’s agents and worked with them from afar.”
The partners said they also were drawn by strong leadership and agent support at the Vero ONE Sotheby’s office and the company as a whole; what O’Dare calls “unparalleled market analysis”; and the collegiate atmosphere of the family-owned company.
“All day yesterday, we got calls and texts from Sotheby’s agents welcoming us to the company,” O’Dare said.
The chance for mother and daughter to work together was another big plus.
“I am thrilled to be working with my mom, Richard and Kristin,” said Lily O’Dare, who has a background in hotel marketing and social media and who did $12 million in deals in her first year at Sotheby’s. “They’ve been my mentors since I started in the real estate, and it is like a ‘pinch me’ moment to be joining their team. Being together just feels right!”
ONE Sotheby’s feels the same way about the O’Dare Boga team.
“Cindy and Richard have built an indelible luxury real estate force in Indian River County, and we couldn’t be more excited to further expand our Vero Beach footprint with their decades of in-depth regional expertise and success,” said Daniel de la Vega, president of ONE Sotheby’s International Realty. “Their commitment to excellence, hands-on care for clients, and deep roots in the community perfectly align with our brand culture. Paired with our unmatched global network, I am confident they will continue to raise the bar.”
The company rolled out the red carpet by turning over the entire newly-renovated first floor of its office at 1401 Highway A1A, about a quarter of a mile south of the 17th Street Bridge.
The O’Dare Boga team has at least four times as much space in its new digs as it did at Premier, including two showrooms for new development projects the team will be bringing to market in coming months.
“We can’t talk about it too much yet, but one project will include 15 new homes on the island that will be on 1-acre lots and start at $4 million,” O’Dare said.
“The new space is beautiful, as you can see,” Dobson said on Saturday, looking around the team’s lobby with a big smile on her face. “We are going to be able to do a lot of great events here. Sotheby’s is so incredible, and we have so much support. The opportunities are spectacular.”
In joining Sotheby’s, the O’Dare Boga group linked its fortunes with two impressive entities.
ONE Sotheby’s is a powerhouse brokerage founded in Miami in 2008 by Mayi de la Vega. In recent years, the company has marched up the coast, buying other Sotheby’s franchises – including Treasure Coast Sotheby’s in Vero in 2019 – and now employs 1,000 agents operating out of 19 offices stretching from Miami to Cocoa Village, according to the company website. Sales volume more than doubled in 2021 compared to 2020, according to Holt, increasing an astonishing 121 percent to $8 billion.
ONE Sotheby’s in turn is a part of the worldwide Sotheby’s International Realty enterprise, which employs more than 24,000 agents – including the agent in Maryland who is taking care of O’Dare and Boga’s client – and did $204 billion in real estate transactions last year.
Founded in 1993 by Carmen D’Angelo Jr. and brothers Joseph and Gerard Liguori, Premier Estate Properties is a super-successful, boutique brokerage that did $3.1 billion in business in 2021 with just 42 agents working out of six Florida offices, achieving the highest sales volume per agent and highest average sales price of any brokerage in the country.
O’Dare was a founding agent at the office Premier opened here in 2007 and Boga came on board in 2009. The partners have good things to say about their former brokerage and brokers, but after more than a dozen years apiece at the same company, they were ready for a change.
They plan to add administrative staff and are looking for other top agents to join their team. “We will probably bring on three or four agents in the coming months, but there is no hurry,” O’Dare said. “We’ll take our time with the interviews.”
