Side Launches New Jersey Operations With KW Recruits

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Guy Gal’s white-label firm Side has set up shop in New Jersey.

The company marked its foray into the Garden State with the launch of Privé Haus, a new brokerage founded by top-producing agents David “DJ” and Nicole “Nici” Ten Hoeve, Side announced on Wednesday.

The husband-and-wife pair is flying solo after 17 years with Keller Williams, where their team rose to prominence. Their cohort, which services Monmouth, Middlesex, and Ocean counties, ranked among the top 10 large teams in New Jersey last year with $139 million in sales, according to RealTrends.

The couple’s team, Ten Hoeve Advisory, will operate as a team within the brokerage. Joining them from Keller Williams are eight agents and four support staffers. Privé Haus will serve as the “anchor” for Side’s operations in the state, alongside other boutique firms in Montclair, Verona and Kinnelon.

The Ten Hoeves have been planning to start their own brokerage since first partnering 15 years ago, according to DJ. Though they operated under the Keller Williams flag, the two have largely controlled their own marketing and operated their team as a business within itself.

Over the years, DJ said they were approached by other firms such as Mauricio Umansky’s The Agency, which first expanded to the East Coast in 2023, and Ryan Serhant’s eponymous firm, which set up shop in New Jersey in 2023, but ultimately, he and Nici wanted to try their hand at business ownership.

“We had four options on the table,” said DJ. Either they join one of the boutique brokerages offering to take them in, open their own shop from square one or partner with an entity like Side, which would provide all the back-end nuts and bolts. Side was a “lighter lift than having to start completely from scratch.”

DJ said he and Nici’s goal is to bring the top agents in the region under the new banner, with a focus on recruiting brokers trading homes in the upper echelons of the market.

“A lot of top brokers stand out in the brokerage they’re in,” where most of the agents are “mediocre,” DJ said. “It gets lonely.”

Side’s New Jersey outpost joins those in 16 other states, including California, Texas, Florida, D.C., New York and Massachusetts. The company is partnered with 19 brokerages across New York and New Jersey, including the firm Magnetic, launched earlier this year by longtime Brown Harris Stevens agent Scott Harris.

Side made a splash in New York City in 2022 when then-top brokers Oren and Tal Alexander left Douglas Elliman to launch their own brokerage, Official, alongside Nicole Oge, Richard Jordan and Andrew Wachtfogel.

But the firm collapsed about a year ago following reports of sexual assault allegations against the Alexanders, who initially stepped down from their roles before taking full control of the company. Side sued Official and Tal and Oren over an alleged unpaid loan given to them to start the company, though the parties settled the lawsuit in April.