Brokerage Kentwood Real Estate strikes deal for Savvy Realty

This story first ran on BusinessDen.com, a BizWest news partner. 

One of Denver’s top residential brokerages has swallowed a smaller player.

Kentwood Real Estate this month took over Savvy Realty, which was founded by Stacey Stambaugh in 2015. Stambaugh told BusinessDen that Kentwood acquired Savvy’s property management business and absorbed the firm’s agents.

The small brokerage firm will now become a team under Kentwood, known as Savvy Group. Stambaugh will also join Kentwood’s management team as a sales manager, and is tasked with helping the company grow its coaching and business development programs.

“Being a small brokerage is hard,” Stambaugh said. “I can’t add value to the extent that is needed for my agents to be successful, and Kentwood has all the tools and resources necessary. I felt like Savvy was at a point where we couldn’t grow much more and needed a stronger backing to elevate to that next level.”

Kentwood CEO Gretchen Rosenberg described the deal as the firm’s first acquisition since its 1981 founding. She said the company chats with local firms monthly but decided to make the leap with Savvy because of Stambaugh’s experience training agents.

“We’ve never been much of a training company because everyone that works at Kentwood has come on board with a whole lot of experience,” Rosenberg said. “Stacey brings a tremendous amount of experience and energy, and even though we’re owned by Berkshire Hathaway, we share the same value of being embedded in our communities.”

Savvy Realty had nine agents, including Stambaugh, although she said not all are opting to join Kentwood. Savvy has operated from a Cherry Creek coworking space, but will move into Kentwood’s office in the coming weeks.

“It feels as if we’re graduating from high school to college in a natural progression,” Stambaugh said. “It is sad because it’s my baby, and I created this amazing company, but this feels like a natural next step.”

Kentwood has previously grown solely by adding new offices, Rosenberg said. Three years ago, the firm expanded to Fort Collins, opening a fourth residential Colorado office called Northern Properties. The brokerage also has offices in the Denver Tech Center, Cherry Creek and in downtown Denver. There are 50 employees on staff and 254 independent contractors.

Kentwood produced $2.1 billion in sales volume last year, making it one of the top brokerages in the U.S. for agent productivity.

“We’re consistently in the top three metro wide for agent sales volume and production,” Rosenberg said. “We were the top Denver producing brokerage last year during the COVID shut down months and had the highest average sales price in Denver in 2020.”

Rosenberg said Kentwood is also looking into additional deals that would allow it to expand further along the Front Range, naming the Boulder and Colorado Springs markets as possibilities.

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