(Save the date: RealShare Apartments comes to the Westin Bonaventure, Los Angeles, October 24.)

SAN DIEGO-With an eye toward opening future offices in the Uptown, East Village and Carmel Valley areas of San Diego, boutique residential real estate firms Urban Real Estate Services and Realty Connex have merged operations and joined Harcourts USA. The new company will be named Harcourts Pacific Realty, a full-service residential and commercial brokerage and property-management firm.

Harcourts Pacific Realty will be owned by partners Eric Jones, Suzen Sarko and Sherman D. and Becky Harmer, opening with approximately 20 agents. The newly formed firm is on track to complete more than $65 million in transactions this year and will continue to occupy the partners’ offices at 620 First Ave. in the Marina District and at 1608 India St. in Little Italy.

HPR will continue URES’s close affiliation with Urban Housing Partners, which has been successful in the development of large-scale urban master plans, for-sale housing, high-density rental housing, retail, commercial, urban mixed-use, modern lofts and upscale luxury penthouses in the Downtown San Diego market, as well as other markets in San Diego County. UHP, headed by Sherman D. Harmer, is playing an instrumental role in the creation of the I.D.E.A. District, a 35-block area in East Village that could generate 10,000 jobs and $1.8 billion in new construction. As GlobeSt.com previously reported, Harmer is helping transform a five-block property owned by the Navarra family into a lively mixed-use neighborhood that will anchor the I.D.E.A. District.

HPR is the 12th franchisee to join Harcourts USA, which is based in Aliso Viejo, CA, in the past 12 months. Harcourts, a 125-year-old international real estate company, has 780 offices in 10 countries.

“Eric and Suzen represent the best of the best,” said Aaron Hodson, CEO of Harcourts USA, in a prepared statement. “We expect them to have a significant impact on the San Diego marketplace.”

He added that Jones and Sarko, who will be the day-to-day broker/managers for the new entity, will be joining a team of 12,000 professionals working in countries that include Australia, China, New Zealand and South Africa. Harcourt International Ltd. exceeded a record $20.9 billion in sales for the 2011 financial year.

“We’re here to make that same impact on the entire US, starting in Southern California,” Hodson said. “We know that if we can be successful in the competitive Southern California market, we can be successful anywhere in the country.”

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Carrie Rossenfeld

Carrie Rossenfeld is a reporter for the San Diego and Orange County markets on GlobeSt.com and a contributor to Real Estate Forum. She was a trade-magazine and newsletter editor in New York City before moving to Southern California to become a freelance writer and editor for magazines, books and websites. Rossenfeld has written extensively on topics including commercial real estate, running a medical practice, intellectual-property licensing and giftware. She has edited books about profiting from real estate and has ghostwritten a book about starting a home-based business.