Press Room

HAMMOND RESIDENTIAL GMAC REAL ESTATE ACQUIRED BY LOCAL REAL ESTATE INDUSTRY VETERAN SAUL B. COHEN

Chestnut Hill & Brookline, Mass. (Mar. 16, 2009) Hammond Residential GMAC Real Estate, one of Massachusetts’ most well respected residential real estate firms, has been sold to local real estate industry veteran Saul B. Cohen.  As a result, Cohen is buying back the firm he started in 1991 and later sold to GMAC Home Services in 2001.

Hammond Residential GMAC Real Estate is poised to take advantage of the down market  as demonstrated by Cohen’s purchase of the four offices located in Boston proper (South End, Charlestown, Beacon Hill, Back Bay), and eight in Boston’s western suburbs (Brookline, Newton, Wellesley, Weston, Framingham, Concord, Winchester, and Lexington).

All 12 offices, staffed by more than 400 sales associates and employees, will continue to operate as Hammond Residential GMAC Real Estate. In 2008 the company had sales of more than $1 billion.

This buy-back demonstrates Cohen’s firm belief in the company he started and its ability to grow and prosper, in partnership with its new parent company, Brookfield Residential Property Services and as a franchisee of GMAC Real Estate.

Separately, it was announced that two Carlson GMAC Real Estate offices in Chicopee and Wilbraham have been acquired by Robert Molta, a longtime real estate industry executive. A third Carlson GMAC Real Estate office, located in North Andover, has been sold to local entrepreneur and real estate veteran George Schruender.

As part of the agreements, each of the three Carlson offices will continue to operate as Carlson GMAC Real Estate and will become franchisees of GMAC Real Estate.   

“From our perspective, we now have offices locally owned by Strategic Partners with a shared vision for the company – which is a powerful combination that strengthens GMAC Real Estate under our new parent company, Brookfield Residential Property Services,” Bearden added.

• Serving the greater Boston area, Hammond Residential GMAC Real Estate, has built a reputation for stellar customer service and solid performance and will be led by Cohen. A Newton native, Cohen is a longstanding fixture in the real estate community and received his MBA from Harvard.  He was formerly president of The Hunneman Company, where he expanded the firm before starting Hammond Residential in 1991 (www.hammondre.com).
  
• Robert Molta, whose local real estate career spans two and a half decades, was most recently a regional vice president for NRT, Inc., the nation’s largest real estate brokerage firm.  Molta supervised office managers with 300 sales associates and seven offices in Western Massachusetts.  The two Carlson GMAC Real Estate offices purchased by Molta are located in Chicopee and Wilbraham (http://www.carlsonre.com/Chicopee and http://www.carlsonre.com/Wilbraham).
• Lifelong North Andover resident and 35-year real estate expert George Schruender is the new owner of Carlson GMAC Real Estate’s North Andover office.  He is a top-producing agent, past “Realtor of the Year,” and a past president of the Northeast Association of REALTORS® (http://www.carlsonre.com/North-Andover).

Terms of the purchase were not announced.

About GMAC Real Estate
GMAC Real Estate is one of the industry’s leading real estate firms with offices throughout the United States, Canada and Portugal.  The company’s unique service delivery model, Premier Service®, has earned it a national Customer Satisfaction Rating of 95% since its inception in 2002 – the best in the industry. 

About Brookfield Residential Property Services
Brookfield Residential Property Services is a division of Brookfield Asset Management Inc., a global asset manager focused on property, power and infrastructure assets.  Brookfield has approximately $80 billion of assets under management and is co-listed on the New York and Toronto Stock Exchanges under the symbol BAM and on NYSE Euronext under the symbol BAMA.  Brookfield Residential Property Services, which purchased GMAC Real Estate in late 2008, was recently named in the 2009 Swanepoel TRENDS Report as the number one trendsetter in 2008.