FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How are you helping agents increase their business?

We help agents focus on their biggest value proposition, themselves. Agents hire us to do their marketing, technology, and back office administrative services. Rather than making the business about us, we make it about them. What does this particular agent need to succeed, and then we get them the structure and resources to accomplish their goals.

Why RE/MAX?

When we looked at the various brands in our area, we wanted a strong international brand. We like the international exposure of RE/MAX, a brand everyone knows, but they also give us the independence to innovate and try new things. RE/MAX was founded around the idea of agents as entrepreneurs, and that’s the model we envision for successful agents. 

Do you have transaction coordinators?

Our agent services division can provide transaction coordination and listing coordination as needed. 

How do I get paid?

We do everything with direct withdrawal and direct deposit. We receive commissions via wire and pay agents via ACH direct deposit. If your file was complete, generally the funds are in your account less than 48 hours from when we received them and you don’t have to come to the office to get a check. 

Do you have office meetings?

Yes, but we don’t do sales meetings or bring in outside vendors. We generally do one office meeting a month. We discuss legal issues, forms changes, rule changes, or general issues our agents are facing. Other times we meet to discuss technology or business development strategies. We’ve spent a lot of time in the past two years talking about strategies to generate listings and how to help your buyer win in a multi-offer situation. We also have twice a month broker mastermind meeting for agents to collaborate.

Do you provide training?

We provide extensive training on efficiency, marketing, technology, finance, business development, and scaling. 133 training classes last year!  Sometimes it is group or small group working sessions, but a lot of our training is specialized and one-on-one. Recently we added our complete agent system, SUCCESS/MAX sourced from top agents across the country regardless of brand.

How hard is it to switch?

Very easy. We handle the entire process for you. It takes about a day but you don’t have to do anything except sign your contract and the transfer forms that we provide. We take care of everything else for you even down to providing you a draft resignation letter from your old firm. 

How do I switch?

We sign the contractor agreement and will send you a package of paperwork to sign. We’ll handle the transfer paperwork with the GRAR, MR, and everything else. All you have to do is tell your current brokerage and we do everything else.

How do I change on the MLS?

We’ll take care of that for you. It happens automatically once we send in the signed paperwork and there is zero downtime. The next time you login, you’ll automatically be on our roster and express forms will fill everything out with our office.

What happens to my transactions?

We can work on the timing of your transfer to make the process as smooth as possible. Some brokerages transfer the transaction over to our office to make it easier for your old brokerage, others prefer you still close it through them. You’ll most likely still pay the old brokerage the amount they would have been paid on the deal, but you won’t pay us anything on the deals that are already pending.

What happens to my listings?

Most sellers want to remain with their agent and most brokerages don’t want to keep a listing with a seller that doesn’t want to be with them, so we haven’t had any trouble moving listings over.

What about my transactions stored in Dotloop?

We can show you simple plug-ins to automatically save back-up copies of your previous transactions for your records so you will not have to worry about losing your sales data and contact information.

Will other agents share open houses?

Yes, our agents are very collaborative and gladly share open houses. We use our internal FB group to share open houses and there are available open houses every weekend. 

Is there office space?

Depending on the location, there is permanent space available. All of our locations have drop in workstations for agents and many of our agents utilize the office for drop in space. We also have multiple conference rooms in each location for meetings.   

What are your fees?

We view the fee model as broken and we use a fee model that aligns your interests and ours, the office gets paid if you make more money. Our profit comes from your growth rather than most offices which charge you 50% of your first few deals and then don’t care about you. Our goal is to get every agent to reach their cap, we want you to be continually invested in your own success and we want to help agents get there.  We invest heavily in our agents, but expect our agents to invest in themselves as well, which is why we use a 70/30 model. Even when your cap resets, you’ll still have enough income to continue paying your marketing costs rather than a place that’s 50/50.

Do you have any bonus programs, profit sharing, or recruiting bonuses?

No. Our focus is on building agents businesses and our agents focus should be exclusively on building their own business, not recruiting. We appreciate refers of good agents, but we want you focused on producing and I don’t ever want a recruit to think they were referred to use so the referring agent could get paid rather than that we were the right fit for an agent. Of companies that do a profit share, the average annual profit share is $850 and the average production of an agent in Keller Williams is only a GCI of $67,000. I’d rather our agents not get $850 in profit share but earn our average GCI of $186,700

Do all of your full time agents farm a territory?

No. Farming can be a good marketing channel, but we don’t usually recommend starting with farming. Once you have an established business, then adding farming can be effective and we’ll add that as part of your marketing plan. 

How many full time agents do you have?

112

How many do you want?

Our model is designed for 150 agents across all our locations. 

How many part time agents?

We’re not usually a good model for a part-time agent unless the part time agent is still producing at least $5 million. We’re not the place for an agent whose only going to do a couple deals a year. 

What is the average tenure of agents?

15.5 years

What was your gross volume of sales last year?

$602 million

How many computers do you have available to agents? Do I need to purchase my own computer and software?

We do not supply computers to agents. To be a successful agent in this market, we recommend a lightweight laptop with at least a 7 hour battery. A Macbook Air makes a great real estate computer, less than 3 lbs and a 10 hour battery. 

What is the average income per year of full time agents in this office?

Average GCI per agent is $186,700

Explain the advantages or disadvantages of an independent versus and franchise, or multiple office real estate company?

Consumers are choosing you as the agent more than they are choosing the company, but a lot of consumers still don’t realize how real estate works. They don’t realize that all GRAR members have access to the same data and listings. The advantage of working for a well known company is that you don’t have to spend any time explaining who your company is, or that they have the same data and information as major brands. In a listing presentation, you get to spend the whole time talking about your plan for the property, rather than having to spend 10-15 minutes explaining your company. 

A multi-office real estate company is advantageous because we can afford resources that smaller companies cannot. We can scale offerings across our entire agent base and spread out the cost of our extensive training, marketing, and technology. You also will have access to more locations, more support staff, and more agents to learn from. Additionally, if you submit an offer on a listing with one of our agents, they’ll know who you are and how you work, our agents like working with ours who also work hard. 

Does this office have a focus on team work, or does each agent operate pretty well on their own?

We have agents who do both. Some agents are very independent, but most are highly engaged with the office and collaborative. We have very strong meeting and class attendance which shows us that the agents value what we’re providing. 

What is the policy on referral fees I receive from sending outgoing referrals? Is it split with the company? If so, at what split?

Referrals are treated the same as commission income. 

Do you provide leads? 

We don’t provide leads, we focus on helping agents identify marketing channels to generate business. Sometimes that includes online lead generation, but usually it doesn’t. For certain agents, Zillow can be very effective right now, but most other online lead generation strategies are saturated and the conversion rate is very low. In 2011-2012 we did a lot of online leads and it was very successful, but that was before everyone was chasing those leads. In 2013 the quality become too poor, leads became expensive, and the conversion rate was dropping. If you want to do Zillow or other online leads, you need to be prepared to spend at least $2,000-$3,000 a month and focus on a small number of locations. I don’t recommend using multiple lead sources until you’ve mastered one. Online leads can be a great source of business, but you need to be fast to connect and show your value and they are much more fickle than a referral. We recommend meeting with a manager to talk about strategy converting online leads or take our lead conversion class prior to spending money on online leads.