The four agents behind some of DC's biggest deals are more like brothers than business partners

A matte gray BMW easily navigates the small, crowded streets of Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood. It fits in among the Mercedes and Audis that line the streets, but this car has a defining feature: its license plate.

“HRL,” it reads. It’s short for HRLS Partners, one of the region’s most prolific luxury real estate teams. Behind the wheel is the “H,” Robert Hryniewicki. (Since Hryniewicki got his car and license plate, the team has added an S for their fourth partner. He says he’ll update his plate when he gets his next car.)

“Clients tell me all the time they see me driving because they recognize my license plate,” he said with a laugh. “Sometimes they’ll honk or wave.”

It’s barely after 10 a.m. on an overcast Wednesday morning, but Hryniewicki has already shown two properties to a high-profile White House official in the market for a new home to accompany his new role. The first, a $5.5 million house in the Berkley neighborhood. The second, a $10 million row house in Georgetown that’s nestled on a popular block among Trump officials.

Now, he’s on his way to his office overlooking the Potomac River where he’ll meet up with his three partners, Adam Rackliffe, Christopher Leary and Micah Smith, and their chief of operations, Peter Calomeris.

In the last year, the team has facilitated 60-plus transactions valued at more than $200 million, according to Homes.com data. On average, they sell houses for an average of about $3 million. As of April 14, 12 of the team’s 15 listings had a price tag higher than $3 million. Meanwhile, the median home price in the Washington, D.C., area is $530,000 to $540,000. All told, the team says it’s had a hand in 1,100-plus transactions resulting in more than $2.4 billion in lifetime sales.

Every day is different for Hryniewicki and his teammates. But in the past few months, that’s been more true than usual.

First, there was November’s election, which has brought an onslaught of ultra-high-net-worth buyers to the Washington, D.C.-area. And if that wasn’t enough to keep the HRLS team busy, earlier this month the team left its longtime brokerage, Washington Fine Properties, after it was acquired by national heavyweight Compass.

Now, the team has joined leading luxury brokerage TTR Sotheby's International Realty.

Hryniewicki, Rackliffe, Leary and Smith are navigating the intricacies and adjustments of starting at a new brokerage all while keeping up with the rapidly changing D.C. real estate landscape rife with high-profile buyers seeking luxury homes.

“Not every day is going to be like this,” Hryniewicki explained at the end of that Wednesday, exactly one week after his team packed up and moved out of their former office. “But when you switch brokerages and it’s spring buying season, it’s going to be nuts.”

Despite the air of importance and earnestness that surrounds the HRLS brand, sitting at a desk in the team’s office feels like sitting at the family dinner table.

It’s seemingly rare to have all four partners at their desks at the same time — and not out in the field or taking a call in a conference room — but there’s a tangible sense of camaraderie.

Each of the five figures at the table is wearing a crisply pressed button-down with a coordinated tie. Their suit jackets hang over the back of their desk chairs, easy to grab ahead of the next virtual call or property showing.

At the head of the grouping of desks is Calomeris. Rackliffe and Smith flank one side, their backs to a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that give way to a view of the Washington Monument. Leary sits across from them. To his right, at the other end of the rectangular configuration, Hryniewicki looks out over his partners.

This is the team that’s behind some of the most notable real estate sales in the D.C.-area housing market. They wear suits every day. They drive luxury vehicles. They work with some of the most important people in Washington, D.C.

And yet, sticky notes are lobbed. iPhones are passed over computer monitors. Conversations start in one place and veer off-course, more than once. Curse words are occasionally shouted. Someone’s phone dings with a notification that a buyer signed a $10 million contract. And to say there’s banter would be an understatement.

“We live in the office,” Leary said. “It’s to be together.”

They shout questions at one another, addressing each other by their first name. Someone shares a photo of their dog. Another describes the concert he took his daughter to the night before as a 16^th birthday gift. At other times, it’s quiet, save for the click-clacking of keyboards.

“We have wildly different personalities,” Rackliffe said. “But at the top level, we’re aligned.”

As embedded as Hryniewicki, Rackliffe, Leary and Smith are in the Washington, D.C., real estate world today, residential real estate wasn’t the original plan for any of them.

It started with Hryniewicki.

The Chicagoan is a first-generation American born to two Polish immigrants who were farmers and factory workers. After spending time abroad in Germany during college, Hryniewicki returned to George Washington University with only a fraction of his savings left.

He headed to the college’s career center, where he flipped through binders of job openings and ultimately applied to work in an administrative role for William "Bill" Moody. At the time, Moody was a successful real estate agent in the D.C. area working for the Sotheby’s brand.

Eventually, Moody told Hryniewicki he wanted him to stay on full time — and for Hryniewicki to join him in starting a new brokerage, Washington Fine Properties. So that’s what he did.

In exchange for a six pack, Hryniewicki helped pack up Moody’s office. For the next nearly two decades, he worked closely with his mentor, playing a role in establishing WFP as a mainstay in the D.C.-area real estate landscape.

Rackliffe was the next to join the mix.

He grew up in Westport, Connecticut, where his dad was the superintendent of the municipal golf course and his mom was a special education teacher. In 2000, Rackliffe moved South to attend the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. After graduating, he went into the hospitality business, working at a hotel in Manhattan. The hours were long, and they kept him from his "college sweetheart" (now his wife), who was still in college.

By 2006, Rackliffe and his now wife moved to D.C. — she had family in the area and he had friends. Like Hryniewicki, he found an administrative role under Moody's supervision and has been working with the team ever since.

Leary followed a similar trajectory. Though he didn’t start with a goal of working in real estate, he was friends with Moody’s daughter in college, and he had always aspired to work for the real estate mogul. He joined the team in 2007.

By 2017, Hryniewicki, Rackliffe and Leary had all but developed their own team. They were selling houses while Moody worked on the business of WFP. Eventually, Moody took a full-time managerial role, and the three agents created their own brand: HRL Partners.

Smith is the latest addition to the team. The Floridian moved to D.C. in 2015 to attend Georgetown University, where he was an offensive lineman for the school’s division one football team. By junior year, Smith was done with the sport, so he quit the team.

In seeking a new way to fill the 40 hours of his week that were once devoted to practice, he found an internship at the then-HRL Partners. At the time, he said he had some interest in commercial real estate, but he was looking at his business career more broadly.

By the end of his senior year of college, Smith was presented with a choice. He could stay at HRL Partners, or he could move to Mongolia with a program through Princeton University. He chose to stay. “It just felt comfortable,” he said.

The choice paid off. A few months after Smith would’ve moved to Asia, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and everyone was sent home. Now, he’s been named a partner on the team, and he was recently selected as one of the National Association of Realtors’ 30 Under 30.

Though none of the partners daydreamed about being a real estate agent in their childhood, their passion for the profession is noticeable. Walking through the streets of Georgetown, for example, Leary points to nearly every house and tells his client a story. He describes hidden paths, backyard pools and notable sales.

“It’s like that test you studied for that you know everything about,” Leary said. “That’s how we are about every house around here. And when you get to share that knowledge with buyers, it’s fun.”

“It’s all in our heads,” Hryniewicki added.

The HRLS brand is creating waves in the D.C. real estate market, a feat that’s taken years of careful strategy, collaboration and sometimes sacrifice, according to the team.

For one, there’s the careful and extensive marketing campaigns (remember the license plate).

The team posts almost daily to its more than 6,000 followers on Instagram, showcasing properties and highlighting closed deals. Every weekend they post a series called “HRLS Slammed Sundays,” walking followers through their weekend schedules.

More than that, the business shills out upward of six figures a year to print and mail fliers to every C-suite professional, law partner and top-assessed property in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia region.

While the team does get a lot of referrals from past clients, Hryniewicki said, many of their clients reach out to the team because they’ve seen their branding, whether that’s on a for-sale sign, a flier or social media.

HRLS also prides itself on its team approach, something it says sets its model apart from others in the area. Every agent is involved in every deal.

When they’re not in the office, the team is in constant contact in their group chat, titled "HRLS" with a fire emoji. They share pertinent details about clients, including the names of their children and where they go to school, so everyone is looped in. They all have access to one another’s schedules, too.

It creates an environment where, for instance, if Hryniewicki goes on vacation with his wife and two kids, any of his partners can fill in for him. Or if there’s a triple booking, like the one on a Thursday morning a few weeks ago, the team can divide and conquer.

“We want every client to feel comfortable with each of us,” Hryniewicki said.

Another important part of marketing the HRLS brand: the uniform. Most days, all four team members don a crisply pressed button-down and a suit. They all just so happen to have nearly perfectly coiffed hair, too.

They might pair their suit with a pair of fancy sneakers, or maybe they’ll opt for no tie, but that’s about as casual as it gets. Even on weekends, Leary said, he never strays much farther than dark pants and Chelsea boots.

While it's not unusual for real estate agents to wear business attire, HRLS' commitment to their appearances, even in the humid D.C. summers, is reflective of their clientele.

Many of HRLS’ partners are “most comfortable” in a suit anyway, Leary explained, referring to the politicos, lawyers and executives he so often meets with.

“It’s our vibe,” Leary said of the team’s outfits. “We’re here to be of service. We’re not here to be in comfortable clothing. We’re here to be polished.”

Not every part of the HRLS team is polished to perfection, though.

The meticulously planned schedule has at least one person always working. “We’re on 18 days straight sometimes,” Smith said.

That’s uncommon, though, he clarified. Every quarter, the team works out who is taking what weekends, and typically, the outcome is a rotating schedule that accommodates vacations, family and other obligations. It’s not always possible, though.

“There are just moments where you know you’re going to miss out,” Rackliffe, a dad of two, said, but he noted that he starts later than his colleagues a few days a week because he prioritizes driving his daughters to school.

Things can get hectic on a daily basis, too. For example, on a particularly busy Wednesday, Smith left the office around 11 a.m. His lunch, a salad ordered from Sweetgreen next door, was placed on his desk around noon. It wasn’t until 4 p.m. that Smith returned to his desk, and his untouched lunch.

And that’s not accounting for the upheaval just a few weeks ago. Reminders of the brokerage move are everywhere.

Around the team’s desks there are stacks of overflowing, colorful folders atop file cabinets. Boxes teeming with desk innards and listing brochures dot the floor. A framed copy of The Wall Street Journal leans against the wall. A bubble-wrapped box sits in front of it.

There are still logistical kinks being worked out, too. Calomeris flits between his desk and the floor, connecting wires to phones and computers and headsets. He double fists cellphones, helping set up new numbers and email addresses. Hryniewicki collects badges and parking passes in need of return to the old office.

HRLS is set to open a new office for TTR in Cleveland Park, but for now, the team expects it will be in a temporary space in Georgetown for about six to nine months.

Until then, Hryniewicki, Rackliffe, Leary and Smith said their relationships with one another and the D.C. real estate community will keep them grounded.

“We all come from a middle-class upbringing," Hryniewicki said. "We all have the same values.”