Two of Chicago’s largest independent real estate brokerages are merging at a time of massive upheaval in the industry.
Baird & Warner said Thursday it will be acquiring Dream Town, forming what the second-largest brokerage in the region based on 2024 sales volume.
The move will bring together nearly 3,000 real estate agents, loan officers and other staff along with roughly 35 offices across Chicago and the suburbs.
“What drove the merger is the synergies that we found,” said Yuval Degani, founder and chief executive officer of Dream Town. “It turns out that we just developed a lot of good systems which are different than each other’s … Putting the two of these together was incredible.”
Degani will join Baird & Warner’s leadership as president of brokerage services. Over the next two to three months, Baird & Warner CEO and president Steve Baird said, the two brokerages will work to combine everything under the Baird & Warner brand. Dream Town, founded in 1998, will phase out its name and branding once the merger is complete.
Baird said the merger came about “organically” after years of knowing Degani. He said turmoil in the industry — including market slowdown, brokerage consolidation and the National Association of Realtors’ settlement over broker commissions — influenced the decision, and said a major reason for the merger was to create a strong, independent brokerage with local expertise. In December 2024, New York-based Compass announced its acquisition of Chicago-based @properties Christie’s International Real Estate. The deal was expected to close in the first quarter of 2025 and was valued at $444 million, according to Compass.
Real estate is a local business, Baird said, and it’s important that ownership is local at a time brokerages increasingly are run by out-of-state companies.
“It’s about what’s happening down to a particular neighborhood,” Baird said. “That’s really what buyers and sellers are interested in.”
Baird and Degani wouldn’t disclose terms of the deal.
Dream Town bills itself as a digitally driven brokerage, with more than 1 million registered users on its website. The company also has a strong internal software that serves as an all-in-one platform for its agents, Degani said, which will complement Baird & Warner’s back-end systems.
“It’s the best of both worlds,” Degani said.
Baird & Warner, a family-owned firm, was established in 1855. Baird is the brokerage’s fifth-generation owner.
The biggest issue facing the real estate market is the lack of inventory, Baird said, coupled with “almost unlimited” buyer demand.
Baird sees the merger as a way to meet that challenge.
“We think, by going together, we just become a stronger company,” he said. “We have bigger market share, more coverage across the market.”