Brokerage Insider

What does it take to average 24 transactions per agent? How about being up by double digits during the pandemic? How do you create a culture of success in your real estate brokerage? How important is your real estate brokerage CRM?

Listen in as Brenda Tushaus joins our VP of Product to discuss these questions and more!

TRANSCRIPT

Katie Ragusa: Welcome. Hi, Brenda. So for the whole group, just a little bit of background on Brenda and what we're going to be talking about today, she is the CEO of Minnesota based Re/max Results. They have 42 offices and over 1200 throughout Minnesota and western Wisconsin. She became the CEO of the company in twenty eighteen and has been in real estate for twenty four years. So she's got a huge background based on the 2020 Real Trends, 500 report, Re/max results of the country's largest Re/max franchise and the 13th largest brokerage for total transactions. So lots of big stats there. Hopefully I got everything right, Brenda. Anything I missed. All right. OK. Quite a profile. So you represent a major company. So what we're going to talk about today is getting into growing a company, recruiting good people and not just bringing them on, but keeping them around. So thanks for being with us today and sharing what you know now.

Brenda Tushaus: Thanks for having me!

Katie Ragusa: So let's kind of go backwards in time a little bit. And you guys are forty two offices. Yeah, we just we just grew to about forty two and we'll talk more about that from forty one to forty two. But so when you started with the company it was three offices I think. So looking back, what are the foundational pieces that makes Re/max results who you are that have stayed the course through all of those years.

Brenda Tushaus: So we yeah. When I started I've been at the company now 19 years. We had one hundred and fifty agents or so and three offices. And I've obviously held a variety of roles through the years. And I was just looking at our stats just recently and in the last 19 years we've done 15 acquisitions. So that's been a part, a major part of our growth. Obviously recruiting is just as important, but the acquisitions, that chunky growth, that that helps as well.

So as far as I will tell you, one thing that I discovered when I was looking at some of this recently is most of the acquisitions we had one big one when I was about two or three years into the role that doubled the size of the brokerage. It brought on about three hundred associates. But since then, our acquisitions have been really small, chunky growth. They've been anywhere from 20 to 50 associates that we that we add each time. So very small, small acquisitions and is not more intentional.

Katie Ragusa: Like what would your advice be to those who want to get big, fast and double in size? Triple in size, really?

Brenda Tushaus: Well, it depends on what you can afford. So it just depends on what, what you're looking to acquire and how much you can pay. And so the small the smaller ones through the years have worked for us. We did have a year. It was I think it was twenty seventeen where we added we did about six or seven acquisitions that year and those were a bunch of small ones than we did one in twenty, eighteen, twenty nineteen.

We had to just kind of catch our breath and now we're back in twenty in full on growth mode again. Right. So yet another broker and market that's booming in these times. So that's really great to see. 

Katie Ragusa: And inspiring. So you just had the 15th acquisition literally just it earlier this week or last week of that. What was that like?...

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Rob Hahn is the prognosticator of the real estate industry. A few weeks back on Brokerage Insider, he discussed how teams are the biggest threat to the brokerage industry. This week Rob discussed the big news that Zillow decided to become a real estate brokerage AND that they will stop accepting feeds and instead just get IDX data from MLSs. Listen to what Rob thinks.

TRANSCRIPTION

Or in the explode virtual conference on Thursday, September 24th. We look forward to returning to our regular schedule program soon, but until then, enjoy this session. In this episode, I interview Rob Hahn, managing partner of 7DS and Associates and prognosticator of the real estate industry.

Eric Stegemann: And so, you know, Rob, I actually wrote up a whole bunch of questions before yesterday morning to talk to you about. Sure. And I kind of threw them in the trash can and started after the Zellers news. Yeah, after the big announcement. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, and I mentioned this morning when we talked to David Gulper, and I'll just reiterate it for anybody that was not in the track this morning, but to announce that they are starting a brokerage officially, even though they had real estate licenses for a while, their official start markets are in Tucson, Phoenix and Atlanta. And so they're going to start up a brokerage, but particularly two things of note. Number one is they're going to focus their brokerage on just their home buying process. And number two is they're moving away from fees where they accept fees and going straight to index data directly from all of your analysis. So let's talk about Zillow homes for just a second. They are going to have salary based agents. Right. And, you know, on a scale of one to 10, considering last time one of our big topics when we talked on the last show of Brokerage Insider, so we talked about it and you said Zillow is not the biggest threat to brokerages. Let me first ask you, do you think that's changed at all? Like if you had to give a scale of one to 10, where did you think they were before yesterday and where do you think they are now? I'd say probably before yesterday.

Rob Hahn: They're probably three. And today there are three. I don't I don't think anything has changed, you know, and I think I made this point in my latest post about this, you know, that I just put up yesterday as a reaction. People are like Zillow is a competitor and yadda, yadda. I'm like, look, unless you've got a couple billion dollars of investor money and they don't care about losing it for 10 years, you're not a competitor. Like, that's not you know, that's not what their business is. And I guess the way I look at it is I mean, for because this is a brokerage group like do you think open doors, a competitor. Because this is the same thing, right? They have billions of dollars, they're going to go in and pay cash for a house they're using, they're in house employee agents to do it. So if you don't think they're open doors a competitor, then you probably shouldn't think that those competitors, if you did think they're open those competitors, I guess I'd like to know how, like, do you have billions of dollars? And again, their brokers who have started Ibai are at odds. Right. And I'm like, look, that's great. But do those investors expect a return for their money? If the answer is yes, you're not a competitor because neither Zillow nor Open...

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There are lots of ways to help sell a home faster, but there is no more sure fire way to make sure to do your clients the best service possible than using professional real estate photography.

Even if your brokerage's average sales price is not $1 million or more, you can use professional listing photography to stand out and keep brand consistency. Listen in as Jeff Corn, the CEO and founder of Virtuance, discusses the importance of this consistency.

TRANSCRIPT

Eric Stegemann: Hi, everybody, and welcome to Brokerage Insider, the podcast where we interview the leaders in brokerage and technology. I'm your host, Eric Stegemann, the CEO of TRIBUS. Today on the show, we have Jeff Corn. Now, Jeff is the CEO and co-founder of Virtuance. It's a leading photography vendor to the real estate industry. Thanks so much for being on today, Jeff.

Jeff Corn: Thanks for having me, Eric. Excited to be here. Appreciate it. Yeah.

Eric Stegemann: So tell us a little bit about Virtuance?

Jeff Corn: Virtuance is a photography and visual marketing partner to the real estate industry. What that means is that anything related to listing marketing across the nation, that's that is what we focus on. It's all that we do. And we're very fortunate to partner with tens of thousands of real estate agents and brokerages in across the entire country. And we've been doing it for four, ten years. We celebrated our 10 year anniversary this year.

Eric Stegemann: Congrats. That's awesome. That's we're very, very close to you. We're just one year past year at TRIBUS at eleven years now. So, you know, we all started around that that same time. And I find that a lot of the companies that started in that ballpark where you were kind of competing up are fighting against what was going on after the downturn. I find you're more resilient and tend to stick around longer. Right. So tell me what was asked me.

Jeff Corn: Why did you start the company like first period of time ever? Right. And my answer is, is probably similar to yours would be that, you know, at that point in time, there's only one way to go. It's up. Right.

Eric Stegemann: So darn right. Darn right. Yeah, that's the way I was looking at it back then, too, was that, you know, that in the real estate industry, we fortunately with my brokerage that I previously had things were going pretty well because we actually had contracts for doing foreclosures and things like that. But in the tech space, I felt like there was going to be a reinvigoration for it. And it sounds like you did, too, around the same time. So what got you into the photography side of the business? 

Jeff Corn: Yeah, good question. So prior to the founding Virtuance, I was in the commercial real estate space. I was I had come out of graduate school and want and thought I was going to be a real estate developer, worked for a commercial rete in acquisitions and then worked for most recently prior to starting, Virtuance worked for a small real estate development shop in Denver. And part of my role there was to market all of the properties that we would build and bring to the market. And one of the things that I would do in that role is to hire a photographer. As soon as we finished up a building and we were getting ready to lease or sell it, we the first thing that we did is made a phone call to a photographer and had that photographer scheduled to come out to market the property. And...

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Melody Foster, The Chief Experience Officer of fastest growing brokerage in the US, Corcoran Global Living, joins this episode of Brokerage Insider to discuss managing their growth over the past year. The company went from 400 agents to over 1000 in just 11 months - during COVID no less!

Listen in as she also discusses tech and marketing for luxury brokerages.

TRANSCRIPTION

Thanks for listening to Brokerage Insider, this week's episode was recorded live during the Explode Virtual Conference on Thursday, September 24th. We look forward to returning to our regular schedule program soon, but until then, enjoy this session. In this episode, our VP of product, Katie Ragusa, interviews Melody Foster, the chief experience officer in charge of marketing and technology for Corcoran Global Living in the California and Nevada area.

Melody Foster: I'll give it a nice to see you, Brenda. It's like I'm like, oh, I get to follow Brenda.

Katie Ragusa: That's a tough act to follow. But nice to see you, Yes, we are. We've got some powerful women here talking this afternoon. So a little background on Melody if you're not familiar with who she is. So far, she is the chief experience officer at Corcoran Global Living, which is actually the first ever Corcoran franchisee and chief experience officer. So as CXO you handle, let me see if I can get this mouthful. Branding, marketing, advertising, Lead, nurturing, PR communication, web development, all things tech. So pretty much every manifestation of the brand and marketing it in any medium. So that's a lot and you've got a ton of experience. So what brought you here and how did you become the lead on all things experience at Corcoran Global Living?

Melody Foster: So you know, my background prior to Corcoran GL or CGL, as we call it, because it's a mouthful to say. Right. Right. But prior to that, I mean, Katie and I go back several years at this point.

Now, I was with Zephyr Real Estate, which was the number one indie {brokerage} in San Francisco.

And even prior to that, I was at Paragon Real Estate, which was also a boutique firm in San Francisco and then at Pacific Union, also based at San Francisco, which became California wide prior to becoming part of another larger company we all know about. But most of my background was in marketing. And at this point, I don't think there anyone can truly say that there is a real dividing line between marketing and technology.

We leapt over that hurdle a long time ago, and I think there was just the understanding that there's a difference between technology as far as where the cable. Go into the wall, which is the technology that users use on the day to day basis. And so we do still, of course, have people that manage all those sort of systems, but really need to have someone that is looking at it from the marketing, the brand perspective, the usability, what our agents are actually using and the platforms that we're developing. And when you start going down that road, it becomes clear that you can't look at the marketing and the technology without also looking at the operational aspects and how it impacts the day to day. And that's when Zephyr actually decided to let's blend this all together. And rather than just making this so marketing specific, we decided to do the whole CSO role. And when critical, what happened when we launched that in February, Michael Mahon, who is our CEO, agreed. He definitely is vision forward with that and sees that as critically important to have that level of integration so that we are presenting the right tools in the consistency to our...

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After COVID hit, the demand for second homes dramatically increased. Those living in big cities flocked to drivable second home communities like near lakes, The Hamptons, and around Florida - including communities like Destin, FL and the surrounding 30A region.

As the Director of Marketing & PR of Scenic Sotheby's International Realty, Adam Pfaff has seen firsthand the explosion in demand for second homes in and around the Destin area.

TRANSCRIPTION

Eric Stegemann (00:00):

Thanks for listening to Brokerage Insider. This week's episode was recorded live during the explore virtual conference on Thursday, September 24th. We look forward to returning to our regular scheduled program soon, but until then, enjoy this session

Starting things off here, let me first introduce you, Adam Pfaff is the director of marketing and public relations at Scenic Sotheby's International Realty in beautiful, gorgeous Destin, Florida, the Destin, Florida area. I should say most people will know it there, but I think, you know, you have, you have offices along 30A, which technically aren't in Dustin and along 98, which Santa Rosa beach, I think is where your other offices, right?

Adam Pfaff

Correct. Yeah. So we have we have an office in each of the major markets that we serve. So we have one essentially located here on the Eastern side of Dustin right on 98. We then have one in the heart of 30A and blue mountain beach. And then we have a, another office on the Eastern side of Santa Rosa beach, which is technically an inlet beach. So that office definitely is able to serve our micro markets over in Rosemary beach, Panama city, beach spaces like that.

Eric Stegemann (01:14):

So that's great. So I guess w where I should have kicked off and kind of mentioned is one of the things that I wanted to have Adam on today particularly about is is about marketing, but, but also specifically on second home marketing and again, the rental market marketing, because in the area that is the big pole. It is a second home community, a rental community. And so I think, you know, even if you're not, if you're a broker that's listening into this right now, even if you're not in one of those markets, I think it's important to know what's going on in these types of markets, because you can know how to leverage it or leverage relationships as people change their environments because of COVID. And we're going to get into a little bit of that. So first of all, let's kick off the softball question here. How's the market been?

Adam Pfaff

Man, the market's been, it's been crazy. And I know that's kind of like the standard real estate answer. Everyone just says, it's crazy, but there's really not a better adjective to use because you know, our agents are they're out there hustling, they're working as hard as they possibly can. I know my staff and all of our operations teams are busier than we've been, you know, even on the uptick in the market that we've seen for the last few years, just the amount of volume of transactions that we're doing is so great. The you know, we're definitely feeling an inventory pinch right now. Our inventory is down to under two months. So just under 1.8 months of inventory currently on the market, whereas pre pandemic, we were, you know, in a most of our markets were an...

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Jorge Guerra built one of the most successful brokerages in Miami and the South Florida real estate market. RESF, Real Estate Sales Force, has over 450 agents and has grown to one of the largest independent brokerages in the Miami market by focusing on what agents need.

TRANSCRIPTION

 (00:00):

Thanks for listening to Brokerage Insider. This week's episode was recorded live during the explore virtual conference on Thursday, September 24th. We look forward to returning to our regular scheduled program soon, but until then enjoy this session in this episode, our VP of product, Katie Ragusa interviews, Jorge Guerra, the founder of RESF, the Real Estate Sales Force with 450 agents in the South Florida area. He's also the 2020 chairman of the Miami association of Realtors.

Katie Ragusa (00:34):

So I just wanted to tell everybody a little bit about who they're going to be hearing from. So Eric mentioned some of your credentials just leading into your session, but in addition to that, George launches, brokerage firm, real estate Sales force, or our ESF 15 years ago. And he's since grown it into four offices and nearly 500 agents. So they cover the South Florida market. And most recently he was named 2020 chairman of the Miami association of Realtors, the largest real estate association in the nation and the 2021 global liaison for the national association of Realtors. So lots of credentials there, you run a brokerage, you hold, you wear many hats. So I think today we want to focus on operating on and keeping your brokerage running in a post COVID environment and just lessons that hopefully we won't be here forever in these circumstances. So lessons really that we can apply to any major shift in the industry. So I remember I got my license back in 2008 during the downturn. So there, there just seems like, no matter what, if you're in the business long enough, you're going to hit some crisis or, or something is gonna rock your world or our industry. So I really want to talk about lessons that we can apply longer term. So George, I think you're muted there. So hopefully we can hear from you,

Jorge Guerra (01:59):

You know what? I was talking to my executive assistant in between class and asking him for a water. So

Katie Ragusa (02:06):

Man of water so George, what makes your brokerage res special and unique as a company?

Jorge Guerra (02:15):

Ooh, I don't think we have enough time for that Katie to be, but you know what, I'm going to be honest with you. I think what makes us special honesty is number one, we're, we're an independent company. So, so we have a great pulse on what's going on in the market and, and being an independent company means I only have one boss and it's my wife. Besides that I'm able to move and shift at the speed of now and get as creative...

Most brokerages never make a generational transition, and according to RealTrends, more than 50% of all brokerages are currently for sale due to this. However, Michael Nournmand, and the Nournmand family, have successfully upended these statistics by running a multi-generational real estate brokerage in Los Angeles - one of the most competitive markets in the US.

TRANSCRIPTION

Eric Stegemann (00:02):

Hi everybody. And welcome to Brokerage Insider the podcast where we interview the leaders in real estate and technology today, I'm very fortunate to be joined by Michael Nourmand. He's the president of Knorr modern associates, an independent real estate brokerage in the LA area. Michael, thanks so much for joining us.

Michael Nourmand (00:22):

Thanks Eric. It's a pleasure to be on a, on the podcast.

Eric Stegemann (00:25):

Great. Well, I'm excited to ask you some questions about the market and how things are going, but first, before we do that, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and I know your family history in the, in the real estate business. And tell us a little bit about that and how Norman and associates got started.

Michael Nourmand (00:43):

So I was born and raised in Los Angeles, went to local schools, graduated from USC. I was an undergrad business major, and I always liked being around people. I would say that the people, part of the business, the social aspect was what initially caught my interest. My parents would talk real estate at the table. My siblings thought it was boring. I thought it was interesting. I wanted to kind of know how the deals were going to come together. Even kind of for my apartments, but when I turned 13, the theme of the party was monopoly. So it was definitely something that, yeah, we still like something that, that peaked my interest. And then when I was finishing at USC, I had already gotten my real estate license and had closed a couple of deals. And once I got my first taste, I was hooked and the rest was history.

Eric Stegemann (01:35):

So you started selling real estate to him while you were in college?

Michael Nourmand (01:39):

Yeah, I closed my first deal. I think I was either 20 or 21, but I pretty sure I was 20 when it, when it closed.

Eric Stegemann (

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Buyers are doing more research than ever, before even stepping foot into a house or contacting a Realtor. Your real estate brokerage website needs to provide not only data, but insights into that location data. Listen in as Local Logic's Vince Hodder discusses the importance of local data.

TRANSCRIPT

Eric Stegemann (00:00):

Hi everybody. And welcome to Brokerage Insider the podcast where we interviewed the leaders in real estate and technology today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Vince Hodder. Now, Vince is the CEO and co founder of a company called Local Logic. It's a spatial data company that quantifies cities to match people to the places that they should live. Now we've done a deal at Tribus with Local Logic. And we're excited to talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes, but first of all, Vince, thanks for joining us here today.

Vince Hodder

Thanks for having me. It's awesome to be here.

Eric Stegemann

Great. Well, tell us a little bit beyond being just the cofounder of Local Logic. I know you have a little more real estate in your background. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Vince Hodder (00:45):

Yeah, well, I mean, so my family has been a real estate for a very long time. So from a young age, I've kind of been really, really interested in, in the industry all aspects of it from development to you know, the brokerage business as well. And, and actually, so one of my current cofounder and I actually founded a real estate consulting firm prior to Local Logic, where we were essentially trying to use data to help urban planners, but also real estate developers kind of make more informed decisions as to their investments and their thesis around there. So since then kind of evolved into more of a tech startup, but had been working in the industry for a little while now.

Eric Stegemann (01:26):

Yeah, that's, that's great. So, so a family history in the real estate business, I were, were they in the brokerage business or developers or what, what did, what is your family done previously?

Vince Hodder (01:36):

So my grandfather was, was a, an investor. So he was, he was a lawyer based in Canada and he was working a lot on expiration deals. And through that, he was, he was investing in real estate in Europe, in the U S and in Canada. So was doing a ton of different types of deals. At one point, he was, he was buying up hotels in Florida and in the Caribbean, and then doing a lot of work on land acquisition and investment, mostly through, through plants in the Atlanta region. So I grew up kind of hearing about these crazy deals and, and, and...

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When creating a real estate brokerage, there are many decisions that must be made

• Selecting CoFounders
• Finding staff to help with the things you don't do best
• Selecting your marketing and target markets

In this episode, Katie Ragusa, VP of Product at TRIBUS, interviews Mark Choey, founder of Climb Real Estate in San Francisco and founder of HighNote Labs on starting and building a brokerage.

TRANSCRIPT

Eric Stegemann (00:00):

Thanks for listening to Brokerage Insider. This week's episode was recorded live during the Xplode virtual conference on Thursday, September 24th. We look forward to returning to our regular scheduled program soon, but until then enjoy this session in this episode, our VP of product, Katie Ragusa interviews, Mark Choey, the co-founder of Climb real estate and the founder of High Note labs.

Katie Ragusa (00:27):

All right. So a quick introduction as we get back into things for this session Mark is the co-founder of Climb real estate and he is the founder of high note, which is his latest tech venture. So we'll talk about both of those, and we're really going to go through his experience in starting creating, building a brokerage company and also a real estate tech company. So tons of experience in this world. Thank you for joining us, Mark.

Mark Choey (00:56):

Thank you for having me very excited. How's everyone doing

Katie Ragusa (01:00):

Good? We've got an active group in chats. I'm going to keep an eye on it and see what people are saying. If they want to ask questions, contribute to the conversation on if you're dropping any tips for brokerage websites. If you could maybe even put that into the chat, cause I know people are loving to look up things like that that get recommended. So first off Mark, I gave you an intro that's real estate specific, but actually prior to that, you have finance background. So what brought you from the world of finance to loving the world of real estate and sticking with this?

Mark Choey (01:34):

Oh my God. Even before that I was an engineer, so electrical engineering and then computer engineering and, you know, my, my foray into finance was really through a tech. We were building neural networks to learn how to trade stocks on the stock market. So although I did work for city group...

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With the large money pouring into the real estate brokerage business, it's more important than ever for brokerages to get their data in order. David Gumpper, CEO of the Gumpper Group, technology consultant for the WAV Group, and former CTO of Michael Saunders and Associates discusses data and business intelligence tools for brokerages.

This episode was recorded live during the Xplode Virtual Conference.

TRANSCRIPTION

Eric Stegemann

Thanks for listening to Brokerage Insider. This week's episode was recorded live during the explode virtual conference on Thursday, September 24th. We look forward to returning to our regular scheduled program soon, but until then enjoy this session. In this episode, we interview David Gumpper, founder of the Gumpper Group, tech consultant with the WAV Group and the former CTO of Michael Saunders real estate in Tampa, Florida. Thanks everybody for joining us. We've got a great room going so far. I'm really excited. David, we were doing the brokerage track here and, and I think like a third or, or a little bit right at a third of the people that were in the opening session have chosen to come join us. So I'm, I'm pretty stowed. I thought we'd have people jumping into the team track and the agent track, and here we are. People actually want to pay attention to what we're going to say today. This is great.

David Gumpper

That's awesome. That's awesome.

Eric Stegemann

Everybody, I am so excited if you, if you do not know David you should David Gumpper, he's first of all, the founder of Gumpper Group which is a consultancy, a tech consultancy, but specializes in the real estate industry. And that's because David has a whole mess of, of experience in this industry. So he used to be the CTO of a one of, if not the largest independent brokerages in the state of Florida Michael Saunders and Company. And he's just an all-around great guy and a data nerd like me. So the first session that we're going to talk about today is brokers and using their data. And I got to tell you, David, I had some questions lined up for us to talk about, and I literally scratched through all of them and started over yesterday because of what happened. So with, with the Zillow news. So I'm excited to talk about that part. But first of all, David, why don't you tell me a little bit, you know, I gave everybody that, that ten second run down, but why don't you give us the, you know, the, the minute or two minute run down of, of your experience?

David Gumpper

Yeah, thanks, Eric. And it's my pleasure to be here and be able to speak at this at this conference. It's, it's really awesome. This is great. Great to see everybody's face and, and put those videos on why not? It's always fun, but a little bit about myself. I've been in technology for, geez. I had 25, 26 years, started out as somebody as a little bit of a with a CAD background, computer aid drafting back in the days for architectural mechanical civil architectural and kind of got into computers because cause of the CAD, I worked for small companies and did not have the resources to be able to get their computers fixed. And for some reason I became the guy that fixed them and kind of went down that road, ended up spending a lot of time getting my different certifications worked in the pharmaceutical field for four or five years before I joined into the real estate world 17 years ago.

So I spent the...