End of an era - David Ogilvy & Associates is no more

Defunct

Sold the business to Sotheby’s

I’ve bashed Ogilvy on these pages for years, but he created a remarkable business, running multiple-full-page advertising in Greenwich Time, week after week, year after year, and established himself as the premier real estate firm in Greenwich. And many Greenwich mansion owners owe him a huge debt of gratitude: he created, and maintained in the face of reality an illusion of extreme value for the Greenwich high-end market, and that elevated prices for decades, and propped them up long past the collapse of 2008. Alas, that couldn’t continue.

The magic of Ogilvy was that, unlike every other agent who grossly overpriced a client’s home, he kept their loyalty as the years went by, the price slowly dropped, and the house refused to sell. That magic started to erode a decade ago and we began to see clients desert to other brokers after a few years of failure, but Ogilvy enjoyed decades of success weaving his spell, and it, and he, was amazing.

If the man most associated with the top range of our market has thrown in the towel, is that merely an acknowledgment of advancing age, or is it a signal that the game is over?

Stay tuned.