What makes you choose your real estate brokerage?

[Carl Gentile]

With a thousand different companies out there, large, small, tech driven, brick and mortar, local, nationally, there are a lot of options.

What are the few deciding factors for you that led you to the real estate brokerage you are with? Also curious your level of experience and production level to see how it correlates and how you think you could increase that production.

Let’s get ready for 2020 💪

[Monica Breckenridge]

@Carl Gentile I didnt chose a brokerage. I always wanted to do my own thing. So I created my own brokerage. I wanted to be the CEO. Then I hired my own managing broker. This was I was able to do what I wanted to do. As

Far as other agents I think its just a matter of what is a good fit for them. Some agents want lots of training in the classroom so then Keller Williams is best for them. Other agents want to be on their own but want a big brand and dont need training. So Re/max may be good for them. Other agents may need leads because they dont have any money to market themselves. There are not that many brokerages that provide good leads.

[Jay Hinrichs]

Originally posted by @Monica Breckenridge:

@Carl Gentile I didnt chose a brokerage. I always wanted to do my own thing. So I created my own brokerage. I wanted to be the CEO. Then I hired my own managing broker. This was I was able to do what I wanted to do. As

Far as other agents I think its just a matter of what is a good fit for them. Some agents want lots of training in the classroom so then Keller Williams is best for them. Other agents want to be on their own but want a big brand and dont need training. So Re/max may be good for them. Other agents may need leads because they dont have any money to market themselves. There are not that many brokerages that provide good leads.

used to be you wore the gold jacket if you wanted training.. my wife ran a few C 21 offices for many years and was an excellent trainer she was also a trainer for Floyd Wickman. 

now a days its so virtual at least here in Oregon rare does anyone come to the office.. There are brokerages in our market that do hand out good solid leads.. And of course you pay a referral back to the office plus your split.. but our system here is mainly one price for the year no split.. so like my wife pays 10k a year .. plus MLS and BOR dues. that's it 100% after that.. and it works for her she is mid level at about 15 million a year in sales.. I think the team concept has taken over for the full service training brokerages..

[Monica Breckenridge]

@Jay Hinrichsyeah I agree, teams have taken over in real estate. I am a team leader and when people join my office they just want to be on my team.

[Carl Gentile]

@Monica Breckenridge I do think the team model is changing the industry! Most agents are afraid to be on their own now a day and really want to rely and leverage on a team to ensure they can generate some sort of business. The model has changed the industry as a whole. I have actually opened my marketing platforms to new agents and created training programs for them that I have  set them free with as an informal team - trying to lower my overhead and micro managing by simply providing straight forward tools. I think we will see an enormous change throughout the industry and standard models in the next two years.

[Russell Brazil]

I picked my brokerage/office by first choosing the company with the largest market share in my metro area. (That share has varied between 13% and 19% while Ive been with the company) and then I picked the top office of that company on a per agent productivity basis.  My plan was to be around the best, copy the best....and now, Im one of the best.  If my office location were an independent brokerage, we would be about the 150th ranked brokerage in the country by sales volume, with our small 100 agent office.

Theres simply no replacement for surrounding yourself with successful people, learning from each other, pushing each other etc.

[Lien Vuong]

Amen to what @Russell Brazil said! You also need to consider their training tools, resources they offer, mentorships available, and leads for agents. Those will help you get to the next steps of your business and production level. 

[Sean McDonnell]

The most important factor that I looked for was the commission splits. I was confident I would be able to generate enough business for myself through my sphere of influence, networking, referrals, and self marketing.  I did not want half my commission going into someone else's pocket.  

[Randall Weatherall]

As a younger Agent, I decided to go independent and sell full-time after having had years of experience on the back-end, helping to set up systems and processes to streamline our office's production and growth to allow for more.  When I started, we had a monthly average of about 5 deals across a few Agents.  When I broke off, we had grown to between 25-30+ monthly deals with one Agent and growing!  

I stuck with where I worked because it let us grow our market share and our service area as well as allowed me exclusivity on multi-family/commercial work within the brokerage (we're still just a smaller, 5-Agent office based in Memphis).  Leading back to Russell's comment above, I am also surrounded by people that can support me and push me to the next level, constantly helping me grow my brand and my book of business/SOI.  As for production, my knowledge of the market and our streamlined processes allowed me to close over $3,000,000 in the last 6 months with another $2MM in the pipeline under contract.  I know this is a very unusual scenario, but it all leads back to the age-old mantra: be good and get noticed.