first it would depend on your specific goals. a "brand" like remax provides you with a "Pre-sell" due to its name recognition as well as potential training and support from its franchise network. the latter (i'm not familiar with) sounds like a more local entity that may have the benefit of increased income streams because of its investors network. on the other hand you may still have the access of the REO that remax has exposure to as well. in my, opinion if you are relatively new without much of a following i would recommend remax because of the affiliation with the "brand" allows you an advantage PROVIDED you work to take advantage of it. that is not to take anything form the other choice either. it really comes down to preference.

It's your job to find the deals that we can't find on our own.While it is hard work, it's probably the best practical training in deal recognition and acquisition, which I consider to be the #1 and #2 skills of a successful real estate operator.

A small brokerage has my attention, but how much should a big box agency with the all important "NAME RECOGNITION" factor into my decision?

Facial hair helps too.

For example while we buy data from the big boys and others, we also have to abstract foreclosure data ourselves in certain counties as the big boys don't have it available until the first foreclosure sale date has already occurred - meaning their data would be pretty much worthless to our customers.Scraping and "bots" doesn't really play much of a roll in any of this as the most important data is contained in documents that in many states aren't available online, or even when they are, can't be reliably turned into data using optical character recognition (OCR).

And any change substantial enough to remove related party status is likely to trigger a recognition of gain anyway.He could always complete his 1031 on another piece of property and then refinance to purchase the in laws property.Or you could go old school 1031 and you buy the in laws property and then exchange properties with the client. 

You'll have to work with your CPA's to ensure that no gain recognition is triggered but at the end of the day you're left in control of an asset that she is now a passive investor in and no recognition of gain has occurred.  

The larger company will generally have a good name recognition as well, public perception is important.

My wife is a very busy residential agent here in Richmond VA, and I am a busy facial plastic surgeon.

It's public knowledge that we have this partnership, due to the sheer number of transactions and recognition of the homes we've sold, however this has not deterred agents from pursuing the investors business.