David Ellis ran RE/MAX First Realty in St. George for about a decade before he opened the Southern Utah office of The Agency in 2021 as Managing Partner and Broker-Owner. The Agency is a Los Angeles-headquartered luxury real-estate franchise built around high-end residential listings; the St. George office is locally owned but operates under that national brand, and the office on East Tabernacle Street sits a few blocks from the historic core.
What the franchise structure means
The honest framing here is more important than usual. Ownership of the local office is genuinely local — Ellis is the broker-owner — but the brand identity, the marketing playbook, the back-end systems, and the listing-presentation aesthetic all come from a national franchise that has built its name around the kind of high-end real estate that runs through Beverly Hills and Aspen. In Southern Utah, that has positioned the office around custom-home and luxury-tier transactions in St. George, Ivins, the Ledges, Entrada, and the resort communities.
Where the segment actually exists
The custom-home and luxury layer of Southern Utah real estate is real and growing. Multi-million-dollar homes in Entrada and the Ledges, custom builds against the red-rock backdrop, second homes for in-state and out-of-state buyers — the segment that twenty years ago barely existed in St. George now generates enough volume to support multiple brand-aligned brokerages. The Agency’s St. George office is positioned for that segment specifically.
Disclosure
Local site, parent-brand blog post documenting the office launch, clear public attribution of Ellis as owner-broker — the candidate disclosure runs cleanly. Tabernacle Street office is in central downtown.
How to read this entry
The register’s reading: locally owned, operating under a national luxury brand. Both facts belong on the page. A buyer or seller who specifically wants the luxury-franchise marketing and presentation will find that here, with a long-tenured Southern Utah broker behind it. A buyer who wants a small independent brokerage with no franchise overlay should look elsewhere in the file.