REAL ESTATE : Sotheby’s Out of Coast Real Estate; Newport Office Is Now Buie Realty

Sotheby’s, the toney New York auction house, has broken off its three-year flirtation with the West Coast real estate market and turned over its two brokerages in California to local realtors.

Sotheby’s International Realty in Newport Beach is now Marion Buie Realty Inc. Buie, a local broker, opened the office for Sotheby’s in 1985, when Sotheby’s also opened a San Francisco office.

Despite the chic name, the Orange County brokerage didn’t turn up its nose at more modest dwellings; Buie says he has sold everything from $100,000 condominiums to multimillion-dollar digs.

But the Sotheby’s name does best in areas where it has the most cachet, said Stuart Siegel, senior vice president of the auction house’s real estate subsidiary in New York. Sotheby’s wholly owned brokerages are in the posh New York suburbs of Greenwich, Conn., and Southampton on Long Island; in Manhattan and in Palm Beach, Fla. Sotheby’s is the leading Manhattan broker of expensive residential properties, Siegel said.

In Newport Beach, the market for the most expensive houses has cooled considerably from last year, with the biggest homes moving more slowly.

The Newport Beach brokerage will remain hooked to Sotheby’s marketing services as one of 120 affiliated brokerages in the United States and Europe. That means Sotheby’s worldwide list of high-rolling clients will contact Buie’s brokerage first when looking for property in Southern California.

“We’re most interested in marketing only the top 10% of the market on a regionwide basis,” Siegel said. “In Orange County I guess that would mean $1-million properties and up.”