Westside Estate Agency is defined by the values and vision of its two founders, Stephen Shapiro and Kurt Rappaport. In 1999, they set out to build something deliberately different from the brokerage model around them: one where the people at the top remain personally involved in every transaction, rather than a name on a letterhead answering to a corporate office thousands of miles away.

That principle hasn’t changed. More than two decades later, Shapiro and Rappaport remain directly engaged in the business they built — not just in strategy, but in the deals themselves, across Beverly Hills, Bel Air, and Malibu.

It’s an approach that runs counter to how much of the industry has consolidated. While many brokerages have scaled by adding layers between leadership and clients, WEA has scaled by staying close to the work — hand-selecting agent-advisors who share that same standard, and holding every transaction to the level of scrutiny its founders would bring to it personally.