All Forum Posts by: Zachary Crosby

Just out of curiosity, how many agents do you think you need to be profitable?

At my first franchise I would always ask, why don't we have an office here or there.  The answer was typically we want to hire a broker/team leader that will bring a minimum of 35 agents and ideally at least 50 from the last brokerage. If they couldn't find that person,   I'm guessing that probably pays for basic office rent, receptionist, accounting person and a broker/recruiter.  At least 20 of those agents probably need to be selling $3mil or more a year at 70/30 split.   Maybe you can adjust that model as you see fit...get rid of receptionist.  Take no salary as broker.  Get 100-200 agents paying a flat fee.

Have you built out your model yet to see how many agents you need?

 Hello Zachary and congratulations on this major career milestone!

While I don't own a brokerage, I have been managing a team of RE agents for over 5 years. 

Some things I wish I would've done sooner:
- Find out the requirements for each local MLS you intend to join. They each have different fees, applications, and processes for admitting new brokers
- Consider co-working spaces for office location (regus, wework, spaces, greendesk, etc). Gives you flexibility + exposure within a small community. Depending on your office location, co-working spaces may open you up to more 'walk-in' business than any storefront or traditional office space.
- Evaluate the best tech platforms to subscribe to. i.e. skiptracing, RE data sites, CRMs, etc.
- Create Standard Operating Procedures (w/video) for every repetitive task on the admin, sales, and marketing sides of the business. Loom is a great platform for adding all SOPs to video form - huge timesaver when it comes to onboarding, training, and familiarizing your staff with current systems
- Create a tiered compensation structure for agents to incentivize the high-performers

Hope this helps!

Man...it's a lot of work. I opened up one 3 years ago. I own a boutique brokerage. Thought I would just huge commission and get agents flocking to me. Wrong!

It's very competitive to recruit realtors, you have to train everyone, you have to create your culture, processes, a ton of stuff. I enjoy it but it's not for everyone. 

Why would you open your own brokerage right now? The larger brokerages are all paying $20-$80m settlements and small brokerages have no protection if this ever comes for them. The only reason to open your own brokerage would be to just use it for yourself because recruiting agents will not happen for someone new to the business as a whole. And if you open your own shop, there are hours in the chair required to be open to the public so basically, it's a terrible idea.

Buy a franchise

@Zachary Crosby how big of a purchase? We've had great luck with local banks