Looking for a slice of heaven in East Hampton? Look no further than Rosehip Partners.

Has the tide turned? Is the move back to locally owned real estate firms rather than the big corporates from far away?

Well, veteran broker, Joe Kazickas and his new firm Rosehip Partners, operating out of East Hampton but covering it all, got back to us as promised. His other Rosehip Partners are James Young (son of brokers Meg and Nigel Young for those who remember) and Lisa Levitin, with whom Kazickas worked at both Dunemere and Brown Harris Stevens.

(By the way, Realty Takes tried unsuccessfully to reach Andrew Saunders who is launching another new operation to get his input as well).

In any case, here is more about "local" start-ups, reasons why, market outlooks from Rosehip Partners, Joe Kazickas who started in this business in 1989 with ET Dayton, then joined Allan Schneider, then co-founded Dunemere Associates in 1992, which grew to five offices and was then sold in 2004 to Brown Harris Stevens.

Kazickas observes that though market conditions are poor and may be, "Staying soft into next year, possibly 2010, it is a good time to develop our business in anticipation of better times. The primary reason for going into business now is because we feel we can do a better job of running a real estate brokerage than our competition. I have heard a lot of complaints from brokers about the quality of direct management. As a manager I have always enjoyed engaging my agents, helping them solve problems and in becoming successful independents contractors."

Adding something new to offer clients, customers and agents Rosehip Partners are, "Developing a rental portal website designed to let homeowners enter and edit their rental listings and to manage them (change availability dates, prices, upload photos, etc.). Those edits in turn are distributed electronically to other brokerages pre-selected by the owner. This eliminates having to call each broker to update their listing. It is a very search engine friendly domain which we expect will be the source of leads for agents who join us, during poor markets and good ones."

He adds this insight, "I could never understand the value proposition behind large, expensive Main Street offices. It is a legacy business model that is costly and out of touch with not only how buyers shop for real estate today, but how the real estate agent of the 21st century works. And the worst part is that legacy overhead is carried on the backs of the real estate agent working at those firms, whose job of making a living is already tough enough. At Rosehip Partners we pass our savings through to the agent by way of significantly higher commission splits. In fact our starting split is 70/30."

Rosehip has leased a great building at 251 Pantigo Road which Kazickas says has "a great phone number - 324-0009. Good feng shui [and] a place for our agents to come to and sufficiently to do the job of processing transactions and marketing our firm."

The new firm's strength says Kazickas, "Will come with the agents who join us and who understand that we are working to redefine how things are done to their benefit. We can't wait to tell our story to real estate agents who are looking for a true alternative to the agencies with which they are currently affiliated."

Forewarned is forearmed! Where did the name Rosehip come from, Joe?

Lastly, we hear that Brown Harris Stevens is shutting down their East Hampton Office on Newtown Lane. Down-sizing or a lateral move? Well, we shall see, because East End real estate is a very strange, but often grateful, business.