How Big?

As a developing company, we are often asked questions such as, “How big will you get? How fast will you grow? How will you look compared to the national companies like Coldwell Banker, Re/Max, Century 21, and Keller Williams?”

Although we are not seers or psychics, we can take a look at the growth of the last two generation companies and what made them unique so we can put Connect Realty’s revolutionary vision into perspective.  

A Look Back… 

Re-Max was founded in Colorado in 1973 by Dave and Gail Liniger as a response to their dissatisfaction with the way real estate business was conducted at the time. Following is a quote from “the History of Re/Max” on their web site:

Residential real estate [was] a high-turnover industry compris[ed] in large part [of] inexperienced and unprofessional staff.

[The Linigers] believed that to attract and retain the best agents in the business, brokers must offer them maximum compensation, advanced support services, and the freedom they need to succeed. Agents would share office overhead and pay management fees, and in return would receive a wide variety of traditional real estate franchise services and more control over their business.

The strategy worked. For a while, at least. The key point is that the industry was looking for a change and the Linigers provided that model. A new model for the time!

Unfortunately, with all of their success, they have not changed with the time. The old brick-and-mortar, franchise, high cost-of-operation model is not the reality of today.

Connect Realty is that model, the reality of the industry today, and we are beginning to see top Re/Max agents and brokers move to our company. 

Gary Keller co-founded Keller Williams in 1983 with a unique and contemporary vision. However, for almost 20 years, his ideas were not widely accepted and they struggled to grow until it finally caught on like wildfire.

An article written in 2000, quotes the Keller Williams’ CEO Mo Anderson:

There’s a new real estate company in town, but according to its CEO, its name is relatively unimportant. In fact, Keller Williams Realty, based in Austin, Texas doesn’t follow the usual nomenclature of real estate companies…

The offices are called market centers… The agents work together to boost sales and enable them to benefit from a profit sharing program, not just commissions… Keller Williams isn’t a real estate company at all: “We are a training and consulting company disguised as a franchise.”

“This encourages more and more to come,” she said. “We want talented players [but] we’re not dying to franchise,” said Anderson.

Between 2002 and 2009, he grew from 12,000 agents to 73,000 agents across all 50 states and Canada. This phenomenal growth of almost 10,000 agents per year is reflective of two things. First, the industry and the people within the industry are open to a different model and, second, they are even more interested in elements that affect them directly, like revenue sharing. Unfortunately for them, the Keller Williams model has become outdated as well.

One of the most significant quotes is when Anderson says that Keller Williams is not a real estate company but a “training and consulting company disguised as a franchise.”  

Connect Realty is a technology company—a direct/network marketing company disguised as a real estate company.

We can be as big as we want to be!