agent as the brand
Issue 84 - May 13th, 2022
The “agent as the brand” is the future of the residential real estate brokerage space.
And the firms who try to control agents and squash their name in place of the high-level brokerage brand will lose considerable marketshare over the next few years.
This “agent branding” tailwind has been building steam in the industry for a few years, but I think as we move forward you will begin to see it become even more mainstream. If you pay attention to real estate yard signs in your neighborhood, you will most likely notice this shift where in addition to the brokerage brand name you will also see an agent’s team name or the agent’s name being more prominently displayed over the brokerage brand. The signage and branding rules vary by state, but the days of agents joining a brokerage just because of the brand name is slowly dying.
Home buyers and sellers choose agents because of their direct personal relationship with that person or because of a referral in most instances. Gone are the days where people just call up the local brokerage and ask for an agent recommendation for their home. A lot of home shoppers are just browsing on portals and then meeting random agents who pay for leads to meet them at the home - you think these customers even know where the agent works before they meet them in a lot of these house showings?
The “brokerage as a brand” has been significantly unbundled over the last 15 years with portals like Zillow providing listings directly to consumers. Pre-Zillow, agents needed to be affiliated with a well known brand/company in order for their listings to get proper advertising in the newspaper and other mediums where big brands had buying power etc.
The value proposition to agents of the legacy brokerage names is getting weaker and weaker with the mentality shifting in the entire industry. Agents don’t see the point in giving away a big chunk of their money to these old school players like they did even a few years ago. The fastest growing firms in our country right now are cloud-based firms that a lot of people have never even heard of, and the firms you have heard of are losing agents everyday or barely hanging on to agents year over year - go read their public financial reports if you don’t believe me.
The firms who cater to agents and go out of their way to boost their brand to make them successful will be the dominant brokerage firm names that emerge in this “new normal” as the industry makes incredible shifts over the next few years.
Newsworthy Links To Share
By the numbers: According to the Placer.ai Mall Index, month-over-month retail traffic rose for indoor malls, outdoor malls, and outlet malls in April. Specifically, indoor mall traffic rose 17.4% MoM, open-air mall traffic rose 14.8%, and outlet malls saw 31.6% more visitors. That being said, overall mall traffic (which includes other retail sectors) is still down.
Online mortgage marketplace Morty announced nine new state licenses and new loan types for buyers.The new loan types include jumbo loans and loans to purchase investment properties, with new states including Texas, Louisiana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wyoming, and Alaska (plus Washington D.C.).Founded in 2016, Morty combines a marketplace model with its online platform and end-to-end guidance from mortgage professionals to provide homebuyers with personalized loan options and pre-approvals. (FinLedger)
Formula One Parent Buying Las Vegas Land for $240 Million To Host 2023 Race (CoStar)
Livly, an enterprise-grade resident experience platform for apartment communities, announced plans to enable tenants to pay their monthly rent using cryptocurrency. The company says the development would make Livly’s Resident Mobile App the first in the multifamily industry to accept cryptocurrency as a rent payment option. (Yahoo! Finance)
Lease expirations: Sublease office availability nationwide increased 3.6% in Q1 to 159M SF, according to CBRE Group Inc. That’s still below last year’s peak but above pre-pandemic levels. Experts say the recent rise in office space on the market is a delayed response to the Omicron outbreak of late 2021, which
led to more companies turning to hybrid work. It also reflects economic tension amid surging inflation and rising interest rates. (CRE Daily)Vacation rental platform Vacasa reported a doubling of booking value, driven in part by an uptick in the price travelers paid to book a home on the site in the first three months of this year. People spent $494 million to stay in homes managed by Vacasa during the first quarter, the company told investors on Wednesday. That generated $247 million for the company, a near-doubling compared to the same time period last year. (Inman)
Why A Secretive Chinese Billionaire Bought 140,000 Acres Of Land In Texas: The inside story of Sun Guangxin’s plan for a wind farm in the Lone Star state and how it incurred the wrath of U.S. lawmakers and environmentalists, becoming a flashpoint in U.S.-China relations. (Forbes)
Realogy changes name to Anywhere: Announced Thursday, the brand and logo refresh aims to 'reimagine the consumer experience at any point in the real estate transaction journey,' according to executives at an Investor Day event. (Inman)
Industry flamethrower REX Real Estate may be closing shop. The discount brokerage appears to be shutting down its operations, according to reports from former staffers and a cryptic official statement from the company Wednesday. (Inman)
GPARENCY, a commercial mortgage brokerage, announced its new solution “Match to Lender,” which gives commercial real estate borrowers the ability to search by loan and property type to access lenders in their state free of charge, according to a press release. The company, which says it is working to shift the legacy model from commission to membership-based, says that the software is a complete departure from legacy systems where mortgage brokers keep originator contacts “close to the vest, and use that opacity to justify steep, commission-based fees.” (FinLedger)
Compass continues to lose massive amounts of $$$ - Q1 earnings yesterday: they reported a $188 million loss on $1.4 billion in revenue for Q1 2022. The 45 cents per share loss beat Wall Street’s expectations, but not by much. CFO Kristen Ankerbrandt also resigned.
The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index reveals the most and least affordable US metros in Q1 2022—and the findings might surprise you.
Most affordable: Topping the list is Lansing, MI, where 92.3% of middle-class locals could afford new and/or existing homes in Q1, which carried a median price tag of just $190,000 in April. Indianapolis took second place at $300,000, followed by world-famous Scranton, PA ($215,000), Rochester, NY ($200,000), and Dayton, OH ($215,000).
Least affordable: The least affordable US real estate markets in Q1 2022 were all in California. Los Angeles ($950,000), where only 8.3% of middle-class residents could afford a home, took the top spot—a dubious honor. After LA came Anaheim, CA ($950,000), San Francisco ($1.098M), San Diego ($900,000), and Stockton, CA ($599,000).