Give me your money, Part I: Sell locally, market nationally and build a real estate brand that actually means something to consumers

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve been interested to watch Sean Purcell, Mike Farmer and Rob Hahn talk about alternative brokerage structures, but the only structure that actually matters to me is our own. It’s possible that BloodhoundRealty.com will grow bigger in due course — all but certain given the work we’re doing this year — but I am never, ever interested in growing so large that I cannot directly control the quality of experience we deliver to each of our clients.

Cathleen Collins and I both work constantly to come up with newer ways of doing our work better, more ways of knocking the socks completely off of our buyers and sellers. This is a process I want never to stop, much less see reversed by the three-headed monster that passes for “management” in most businesses: haphazard philosophy, hamhanded preparation and tightfisted execution.

That is to say, we are a brand, no matter how small we are. We approached our business that way from the very beginning, to have the iconic idea of a Bloodhound speak for us in every possible way. We have never pursued personal promotion, preferring instead to promote the idea of this brand — not just the images but the underlying ideas.

Our market penetration is very slight so far, as must be the case for a boot-strapped brokerage. But there is no one we have worked with, either our clients or their warm networks or neighbors, who does not remember us or the ideas we stand for. We don’t hit 1.000 — although we have not missed on a listing in 2008, knock wood — but we hit the ball so hard that everyone remembers us in the neighborhoods where work.

They remember not us as people, but the brand. One of my favorite clients came to us when, frustrated that his house wasn’t selling, he turned to his wife and said, “What we need is the Bloodhounds.” He didn’t remember us, he remembered our marketing efforts and our results. Iconic ideas Google well, so he found us in one quick search.

This is the kind of branding that I think can make all the difference in residential real estate. The national franchise brands mean nothing at all. They signify nothing but a national marketing budget. Among the people who know who we are and how we work, the Bloodhound idea means something, not just the relentless dedication of a metaphorical scenthound, but also the unique marketing ideas we deploy and the whatever-it-takes service we bring to our clients.

This seems obvious to me. Realtors have a reputation for being lazy, stupid and cheap — a reputation I think is all-but-entirely deserved. How do you counter-market against that? Duh! What is the benefit of counter-marketing against that reputation? We’re not as busy as we plan to be, but the business we have now we acquire with almost no marketing expense. We do an enormous amount of repeat business, and our past clients refer business to us religiously — some of the zealously. But even people coming in over the transom come in pre-sold on the Bloodhound idea. People are dying to meet Realtors who are hard-working, innovative and generous, but they would be delighted to settle for Realtors who are just not-lazy, not-stupid and not-cheap. Marketing our kinds of ideas is easy — especially in this market, where excellent representation can save buyers and sellers tens of thousands of dollars.

All of that leads to this: If people dismiss branding in residential real estate, it’s because they don’t understand the true power of branding. If McDonald’s were branded with the same level of oversight as Century 21, there never would have been a third franchisee. Even a brand like Best Western, which doesn’t sweat the small stuff, is still a very valuable imprimatur of consistent quality. This is the kind of branding real estate has always needed but never had.

I’ve been talking privately with a small network of entrepreneurs who are interested in building a branding network something like Best Western: Independent local brokerages who are united nationally under a commonly-held — and commonly upheld — standard of quality. This would serve a number of my own objectives, of course: Promotion of a national standard of quality, a national marketing voice to educate consumers to seek out and insist upon quality representation, a fighting chance to supplant the NAR as the arbiter of excellence in real estate representation, etc. An organization like this could also serve as a referral network, both for member brokerages and for other vendors — lenders, inspectors, home warranty companies, etc. — who are willing to adhere to the code of quality.

In other words, Realtors who care about quality could unite in a way that not only supports their own efforts but promotes the ideal of quality real estate representation nationwide. Step-by-step, year-by-year we can force the entire real estate industry to adopt our quality standards — or be left behind as oily stains on the pavement. This by itself makes the idea appealing to me.

But wait. There’s more. We are among the best-roasted weenies in the real estate techno-weenie roast. On top of everything else we can do, we can build a national IDX system using the MLS feeds available to each independent member brokerage. RE/Max has this now, as does Keller Williams. Why not you? With a national MLS — built by people who understand real estate technology — we have the marketing reach of the national franchise chains along with the data processing prowess of Redfin.com. And we have a national marketing platform that we can use to throw business back to the member brokerages and the affiliated vendors.

This is a grand vision, isn’t it?

What does it need to make it a reality?

Money.

I can come up with great ideas all day every day, but I am not a wealthy man. If I were, I might do this under the Bloodhound brand. But I don’t think that is as valuable as working with independent brokers. I don’t think anyone works as hard as a dog chasing his own dinner, so I like the idea of working with a large network of entrepreneurs.

Are you game? If you want to participate that’s great, but what I’m listening for right now is fan mail expressed with dollar signs. The lynchpin of this whole strategy is the national IDX system, and if we can’t accumulate funds enough to build something insanely great, the rest of what we’re talking about is a boot-strapping operation. That doesn’t make it not worth doing, but it will be a bigger, harder job.

So: Do you want to buy a piece of tomorrow? The people I can bring along with me can supply the vision, the ideas, the recruiting effort, the hard-scrabble work necessary to make something like this pay off. But before everything we need capital partners. If we can, I want to stay away from VCs, thus to avoid VC timetables. Better by far would be quality-minded brokers who can afford to make five- or six- or seven-figure investments. If Dave Liniger and Gary Keller want to hedge their bets, I can keep a secret.

What do you say? Do we have ideas that are worth investing in? Let me know if you’re interested and we’ll talk more seriously. Or you can just tell me I’m all wet and I’ll go back to building my own brokerage.

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