How Mauricio Umansky's Agency Is Changing The Real Estate Game

Fans of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" know Mauricio Umansky as the dreamy husband of Kyle Richards. Always quick with a quip, but utterly devoted to his family, Umansky has grown in front of our eyes from a fledgling businessman to the owner-operator of real estate firm The Agency. Upon graduating college, Umansky launched a clothing company called 90265, joking to Worth in a 2014 interview, "I started the fad of oversized T-shirts on girls wearing leggings." The company did well enough that Umansky was able to sell it at the age of just 26. After switching gears to real estate, the plucky newcomer nabbed a job at Hilton & Hyland, the luxury real estate firm co-founded by brother-in-law Rick Hilton (husband of his wife's sister, Kathy Hilton).

Funnily enough, Umansky's first big sale was Richards' ex-husband's Brentwood mansion, which he sold for $7.5 million. Clearly, Umansky had a gift for property, earning an incredible $200,000 in commissions over his first year with the company alone. He was subsequently their top seller, out of around 100 agents, for almost a decade and handled approximately 20% of the overall sales. His largest was a Beverly Hills compound that went for $42 million. In 2011, Umansky ventured out on his own, reasoning, "I felt that we could change the experience of buying and selling real estate by marketing lifestyle versus marketing property." Naturally, everything worked out great since, from the beginning, Umansky knew The Agency had to be different.

From the outset, Mauricio Umansky envisioned his high-end property firm as completely different to everything else out there. As he told 1851 Franchise, back in 2011, "Nobody was taking advantage of the technological advances that were happening in real estate." The Agency has since blossomed into 42 branches across the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean, with over 600 agents employed total. Describing the more old-school brokerage firms as "archaic," Umansky elaborated, "There were just a whole bunch of individuals working under a brokerage but nobody really collaborating. It was a complete lack of culture. It became a very cutthroat business. That's where The Agency's rule number one comes from — No A******s." By ensuring he always picks the right people for the job, and guides them accordingly, Umansky and The Agency have emerged as one of the biggest players in the game. 

As he opined, "The key is to pick the right partners and the right people that understand your culture, understand your brand and understand what a luxury boutique is all about." By remaining brand, team, and client oriented, Umansky's firm is an outlier in the industry. Likewise, as the savvy entrepreneur told Worth, the company has three divisions; development, resale, and creative. Umansky explained, "The creative division also does marketing and branding for other luxury companies, like Lamborghini and Wheels Up. It is a revenue stream that nobody else in this industry has." As a result, The Agency sells lifestyle, not just properties.