Realty Brokers Feeling Pinch of Slow Market : Economy: A New York-based broker is closing it Orange County office. It’s only latest effort by brokerages to cut back and consolidate their activities.

A New York-based commercial real estate brokerage says it is closing its small Orange County office, another case of retrenchment by the brokerage industry as the real estate market slumps.

Julien J. Studley Inc., which staffed its office in Newport Beach with a handful of young brokers, will now handle Orange County business from its Los Angeles office.

With the slowing of the real estate market, deals are getting fewer and smaller, and many brokers say some smaller brokerages may eventually have to merge or close.

Meanwhile, brokers are practicing what they call “bottom fishing,” working on several smaller deals instead of the less-frequent larger transactions.

Studley executives said Wednesday that at least one of the firm’s four Orange County brokers will be hired at its Los Angeles offices and the rest may choose to remain in Orange County and work for other companies.

“There are too many people chasing deals everywhere,” not just in Orange County, said Howard Sadowsky, an executive vice president at Studley. “A lot of people jumped into this business four or five years ago, when things were good. Now a lot of them are bleeding.”

Studley isn’t the only brokerage cutting back to save money. San Francisco-based Grubb & Ellis Co., for instance, with one of the biggest brokerage operations in Orange County, recently said it is trying to move its regional operations out of fancy offices to less expensive quarters.

And brokers at Iliff Thorn & Co. recently agreed to cut what had been one of the more generous commission programs in the local brokerage industry. The Phoenix-based company once spent lavishly to attract experienced brokers.

At Iliff Thorn’s newest California office in Corona, brokers who once would have been given a private office are now working in more conventional open work spaces.

Iliff Thorn used these perks to lure to the company older, more experienced brokers with lots of contacts.

Among the biggest lures was the commission policy: The more deals the brokers did, the less they had to share of their commissions with the brokerage. But brokers at Iliff Thorn recently agreed to a change in company policy that will reduce the share of some top-selling brokers’ commissions.

“I think you’ll see a lot more of that kind of thing,” said Tom Gibson, manager of the company’s Irvine office. “This market has gotten way too competitive, and the revenues to keep everybody going just will not be there.”

Iliff Thorn had also been trying to sell part of itself to an investor to raise much-needed cash, and had been looking for a deal with somebody in another line of business, such as property management or mortgage banking. But that seems unlikely in the current business climate, Gibson said.

“Most of the people who have that kind of money to invest are sitting on the sidelines now.”