Regional real estate firm Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Homesale Realty has scooped up Sailhamer Realty, an eight-person firm in Shippensburg. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Sailhamer was headed by John Dyson, a son-in-law of the firm’s original founders.
The firm’s Shippensburg office will close, and Dyson and the rest of the Sailhamer team will work out of Berkshire’s Chambersburg office at 70 W. King St.
Homesale Realty, which has more than 30 offices in Pennsylvania and Maryland, is one of the region’s largest residential real estate firms.
The background: The residential real estate business underwent a sea change this summer with the end of longstanding practices on sales commissions.
But other trends are driving interest in M&A among smaller real estate firms said Rod Messick, CEO of Homesale Realty.
Residential real estate is a business with shrinking margins, making it harder for smaller firms to invest in the tools and services that agents and customers expect, he said.
“We use quite a bit of automation and technology to streamline the listing marketing process that a small, one-office brokerage has a difficult time replicating,” Messick said. “We’re able to spread that investment across 37 offices and 1,200 agents.”
It’s not just the systems, he added, but also the personnel and expertise needed to keep them running.
