Part of the Compass Tops Luxury Real Estate index.
Douglas Elliman ranks #3 in the EPR Luxury Real Estate Brand Authority Index Q1 2026, earning a Brand Authority Score of 76 out of 100. The publicly traded brokerage (NYSE: DOUG) sits behind Compass (87) at #1 and Sotheby's International Realty (82) at #2, and ahead of The Agency (71) at #4. The index attributes Elliman's position to its standing as New York's tier-1 default citation for Manhattan and Hamptons market data, anchored by the quarterly Elliman Reports.
What the EPR Luxury Real Estate Brand Authority Index Measures
EPR analyzed Q4 2025 earned media coverage across 12 tier-1 business, real estate, and luxury publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The New York Times, Mansion Global, The Real Deal, and Inman, among others. Each brokerage was scored on four dimensions: Coverage Volume, Authority Quote Share, Sentiment Index, and Reporter Reach. These dimensions were combined into a composite Brand Authority Score with a maximum of 100.
Why Douglas Elliman Ranks #3
Elliman's 76 score rests on a specific earned-media asset the index calls out directly: the quarterly Elliman Reports, which continue to anchor reporter relationships across the financial press. The reports function as New York's tier-1 default citation for Manhattan and Hamptons market data, the kind of recurring, data-driven publication that beat reporters at outlets like The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and The New York Times return to each quarter.
The index also places Elliman alongside Compass and Sotheby's International Realty as one of the brokerages that defined the post-NAR settlement narrative early and continues capturing citations months later. In the index's framing, "authority compounds", and Elliman is among the three brands compounding it.
How the Elliman Reports Drive Citation Infrastructure
The index identifies a category-wide dynamic it calls a citation infrastructure problem: tier-1 reporters cite the same five to ten brokerages repeatedly because those brokerages have built the relationships, the data feeds, and the named-spokesperson reliability that beat journalism requires. The Elliman Reports are an explicit example of that infrastructure. By publishing market data on a recurring cadence covering Manhattan and the Hamptons, Elliman gives financial-press reporters a reason to cite the firm each quarter, independent of any individual transaction or executive news cycle.
That recurring-data posture distinguishes Elliman's #3 score from the rank-driving inputs at neighboring brands. Compass at #1 and Sotheby's International Realty at #2 sit above; The Agency at #4 sits below.
Inside Douglas Elliman's Corporate Footprint
Douglas Elliman Inc. (NYSE: DOUG) conducts substantially all of its operations through its subsidiaries, including its largest subsidiary Douglas Elliman Realty, LLC. The company was founded in 1911 on Douglas L. Elliman's vision that New Yorkers would shift their preference for traditional homes to favor luxury apartments that were both sold and managed by comprehensive real estate companies.
According to the firm's corporate disclosures, Douglas Elliman is one of the largest residential brokerage companies in the New York metropolitan area, which includes New York City, Long Island, Westchester, Connecticut, New Jersey and the Hamptons, and the fifth largest in the U.S., with substantial businesses in Massachusetts, Florida, California, Texas, Colorado, Nevada, Connecticut, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington D.C. The firm reports leading the New York real estate market by sales volume, more than 46,000 sales and rental transactions annually, and over $29.6 billion per year in sales and rental transactions. The company also operates in development marketing and sales, property management, and title and escrow, and invests in PropTech opportunities through New Valley Ventures LLC.
Where Douglas Elliman Sits in the Broader Luxury Story
The index surfaces two cross-brand patterns directly relevant to Elliman's position. The first is the post-NAR settlement citation effect: coverage continues to dominate the category, and the brokerages that defined the narrative early, Compass, Sotheby's, Elliman, are still capturing the citations months later. The second is concentration risk: six of the top 10 had more than 35% of Q4 coverage come from fewer than five reporters, which the index flags as the most underweighted variable in luxury real estate PR.
The index also notes a third dynamic, "the CEO is the brand", observing that eight of the top 10 brokerages have a single named executive driving the majority of earned coverage. The parent commentary on Elliman does not name an individual executive; instead, the named recurring asset is institutional: the Elliman Reports.
Going into the next refresh, Elliman's 76 reflects a position built on recurring market-data citation and a defining role in the post-NAR settlement narrative. Both are explicitly described by the index as compounding assets in tier-1 earned media.
