After 10 years in the Agora Shopping Center, Sotheby’s International Realty in Santa Fe is closing its Eldorado office.

From among a long list of reasons that Sotheby’s Santa Fe managing broker Alan Ball said contributed to the decision, one stands out as an unmistakable indicator of the current real-estate market. Nationwide and in Eldorado, the market has slowed dramatically.

“It’s a very different market than we’ve experienced throughout this decade,” Ball said.

Somewhere around the middle of 2006, the market ran out of gas, Ball said. The market couldn’t sustain continued appreciation that had spelled huge profits for some investors.

Although the Santa Fe market was somewhat shielded by a low involvement of speculators and less dramatic appreciation rates, he said, Eldorado was poised for change when the real-estate bubble burst in 2006. After 30 years of construction, Eldorado is built out.

New and often custom-built houses continue to sprout in the U.S. 285 corridor, usually costing more than $500,000, but few lots or new houses are available in Eldorado. The supply of more affordable houses on big lots in Eldorado at Santa Fe has reached a permanent plateau.

The other shoe dropped this summer with the collapse of the sub-prime lending market. A nationwide leveraged-buying spree came to a screeching halt. Realtors had to work harder to move properties after buyers no longer could find easy credit.

For some newer brokers who started selling houses during the boom years, the slowdown was uncharted territory, but for longtime brokers, including some at the Agora office, it was just another low point in a cyclical market.

The market wasn’t the only cycle affecting Santa Fe Sotheby’s decisions, though. The company’s lease term at the Agora was due to expire, Ball said. The company analyzed its needs in the context of a changing market, factoring in the costs of maintaining a fifth office in the Santa Fe area.

“Profitability is an issue, but we also have agents who are less in need of an office,” Ball said.

In the digital age, brokers can work from home or from the field using laptops and portable digital devices, Ball said. Keeping an office can become more of an expensive hobby than a necessity for Realtors.

Digital-communication networks have allowed brokers to unchain themselves from desks, but three of the four brokers and one staff member who worked at the Agora branch of Sotheby’s will get desks at other Sotheby’s offices. One Eldorado broker chose not to stay with Sotheby’s, Ball said.

Changes in ownership of Sotheby’s was not a factor in the decision to close the Eldorado office, he said. While many of Sotheby’s local affiliates held fast to the prestigious company name, ownership of the firm has changed again and again.

Formerly a locally owned company, French and French Fine Properties in 2004 sold to the Arizona residential holding company of French and French Fine Properties. Later that same year, that company acquired a franchise of Sotheby’s International Realty in Santa Fe, which at the time was operated by Sotheby’s as a company store under Sotheby’s parent Cendant Corp. For a time, French and French Fine Properties operated a Sotheby’s franchise here as French & French Sotheby’s International Realty in Santa Fe.

French and French Fine Properties’ Scottsdale, Ariz., owner Bob McCord then sold the franchise back to Cendant, which again operated the Santa Fe firm as a company property until dividing its assets among smaller companies. That move put Realogy in charge of the Santa Fe company. Realogy was the parent of nationwide real-estate big-leaguers Century 21, ERA, Coldwell Banker and Sotheby’s.

With the housing market already in a slump, the private equity fund Apollo Management bought Realogy in December for about $6.65 million, according to CNN.com. Apollo’s acquisition included Sotheby’s five Santa Fe County offices.

Broker Kent Jones, who lives in Dos Griegos, works from Sotheby’s Agora office and compiles monthly Eldorado market reports on his Web site, eldoradorealestate.com. Jones said closure of the local office won’t alter his commitment to the Eldorado market, which has long been the focus of his sales activity.

Ball said an exact date has not been set, but the office will likely close around mid-October.

Contact David Collins at 986-3064 or dcollins@sfnewmexican.com.