In Palm Beach, the name of a real estate agent may sound familiar.
You may have seen it in magazine advertisements. Or maybe you saw it on a tag on a building, an award, or a colorfully printed dress.
At least, this is true if your agent is Lisa Pulitzer.
Pulitzer and her partners at Palm Beach County’s top team, Brown Harris Stevens, have closed more than $550 million in deals since teaming up in 2018.
Always a luxury hub, Palm Beach is now a hub for trophy properties, with price record-breaking deals regularly taking place. But in the aftermath of the boom, inventories have dwindled and the pace of business has slowed.
“This is a tough business,” Pulitzer said. “People want results.”
Deal-making is more of an art form than a science, and that’s where Pulitzer succeeds.
Pulitzer, 67, the daughter of the late actress Lilly Pulitzer, has built a career immersed in island society. She understands her most important principle: discretion.
Like other trophy markets, luxury real estate in Palm Beach is bought quietly off-market and regularly traded between anonymous trusts and Delaware LLCs. The island is also notorious for being a social area that is difficult for outsiders to enter.
“I think people see me as someone who was born and raised on this island. They know they can trust me,” she said.
But the 40-year veteran added a new twist to his streak of success in 2018 when he found an unexpected partner.
Whitney McGuirk, who is 24 years younger than Pulitzer, is a childhood friend and best friend of Pulitzer’s son, Bobby Reidy. He grew up on the island, calling fashion icon Lilly Pulitzer “Grandma” and eating at her table.
They joined forces at the right time. Two years after the partnership, a global pandemic would wreak havoc on the island’s market, pushing demand and prices into an unprecedented stratosphere.
Together, they represent hedge fund billionaires, socialites, real estate developers, and even Reidy in multi-million dollar deals. Pulitzer and McGuirk are a meeting of the left and right brains. Mr. McGuirk is a self-proclaimed numbers buff. He writes contracts, books photographers, pulls data. This balances Pulitzer’s outgoing personality with her Rolodex as a woman walking around town.
encounter of hearts
They say they came together naturally. But Mr. Pulitzer was initially reluctant to take on a partner.
“I never thought anyone would want it,” Pulitzer said. She didn’t want to train new agents or share commissions.
McGuirk had just moved back to Palm Beach in 2014. When he returned to the island for Mr. Reidy’s wedding, he was living in New York City and working as one of Ralph Lauren’s top watch salespeople. Tired of the monotonous work of the city, he realized that he did not want to return.
“I told Ralph I was leaving,” he said. “I went home less than a month later.”
When McGuirk returned to the island, he had to find a new career. His father was an agent, so he thought he’d give it a try. The lessons learned from selling a $20,000 watch can also be applied to selling a $20 million home, he said. McGuirk obtained his license and joined Brown Harris Stevens.
In an effort to learn business, McGurk ended up helping other agents, including Pulitzer.
In 2017, he represented spec developer Todd Glaser in his $5.9 million purchase of a lakefront Palm Beach home. After six years and one renovation, he and Pulitzer have jointly listed the property, this time with a $30 million price tag.
“He was born here. He grew up here. He knows the nuances of the island,” she said. “He didn’t need to come here to train.”
It would take another born-and-raised Palm Beacher family to match Mr. Pulitzer. Mr. Pulitzer’s family roots go back 100 years to the island and have been closely intertwined with the development of the old money enclave.
She is the great-granddaughter of newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer. On her mother’s side, she was tied to the family fortunes created by Carnegie Steel and Standard Oil. These same fortunes developed Barrier Island for the first time in the late 1800s.
From dresses to sale items
Decades later, the same surname still reigned on the island. Lilly Pulitzer started her own eponymous brand in 1959, three years after she was born, when Lisa Pulitzer was born. Her bright cotton shift dresses were noticed by American royals worn by Jackie Her Kennedy, Happy Her Rockefeller, and Wendy Her Vanderbilt, cementing the brand’s status as a Palm Beach fashion icon. did.
Before her real estate career, Lisa Pulitzer designed a junior line for Lilly Pulitzer. However, the brand closed its doors in 1984 for her, and working for her mother was no longer an option. (According to published reports, it was revived by Sugartown Worldwide in 1993 and sold to Oxford Industries in 2010 for $60 million.)
Lisa Pulitzer, an avid real estate watcher, thought getting a license might be fun, but she never “thought of making it a career.”
“I bought hairspray, scarves, everything the real estate agent thought I needed,” she said, but it wasn’t a huge amount. She said, “I made $200 on rentals.”
The situation for Palm Beach brokerages was much different than it is today. There was no Brown Harris Stevens, no Corcoran, no Douglas Elliman. Most businesses were individual stores. Sotheby’s International Realty he first opened his office in Palm Beach in 1976.
“Sotheby’s was probably the biggest company at the time, but all my friends were there,” Pulitzer said. “I needed my own space and environment.”
She was approached by a boutique broker who promised her space and an office on Worth Avenue.
“Martha Gottfried came to me and said, ‘Liza, you have no competition.'” He talked about joining the Martha A. Gottfried Company. “And that was it.”
After working at Gottfried, he briefly worked at Engel & Völkers, but in 2011, he said, “It just didn’t work for me” (according to Pulitzer, it didn’t fit the company culture). Joined Brown Harris Stevens.
Although she could have partnered with other family members who dabbled in real estate, she was content to pursue a solo career.
Her sister Minnie Pulitzer and Minnie’s daughter Lily Lise Ferreira are licensed by Brown Harris Stevens. Their sister-in-law, Courtney Pulitzer, is also an agent with Sotheby’s International Realty in Palm Beach.
Liza and Minnie sometimes work together when real estate within the family is on the market.
But her biggest list would be with McGuirk. So far this season, they have a list of over $100 million. Even in the face of inventory shortages and declining sales, their ambition knows no bounds.
“My goal is not just to make the first team at Brown Harris Stevens,” McGuirk said. “We want to be the most productive small team in Palm Beach.”
That means going beyond Douglas Elliman agents Chris Leavitt and Ashley McIntosh.
Pulitzer and McGuirk’s friends and family share that confidence.
“For the fifth year in a row, they are the top team in our brokerage,” said Ferreira, Riza’s niece. “I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”