Realty Connection solves the pain point managing brokers experience whenrecruitingreal estate agents and we assist agents in finding the real estate brokerage office that best fits their style and goals by providing a single forum of information. Our alliances and agreements with various State Associations of Realtors and some of the largest real estate licensing schoolsvalidate the demand for our services.
The success of every real estate company is determined by the number of producing agents within their organization. Real estate is a transient industry therefore continuous recruiting is imperative. The current processes for recruiting are antiquated and challenging creating a significant pain point.Managing Brokers are faced with obstacles including alack of time, unproductive cold calling and minimal information regarding potential recruits. Finding new real estate offices is also a painful procedure for agents. It is time consuming, there is no central source of information to compare offices and they often get “sold” by the Managing Broker without knowing the facts about the office and how it compares with other offices. Realty Connection is a total solution for both brokers and agents that is changing the way the Real Estate Industry recruits.
Realty Connection is a service that utilizes the power of the internet to connect real estate brokerage offices with real estate agents who are evaluating their career options in choosing an office. Managing Brokers create an office profile on the Realty Connection web site to share their entire value proposition such as the power of their brand, their marketing tools, their commission model, their management style. Their profile is dynamic, engaging, enticing and can be updated daily. Agents looking to make an office change or new agents entering the business can compare the value propositions of various offices, communicate directly with Managing Brokers (anonymously if desired), create their personal profile for Managing Brokers to review. All agents must register for free and become leads when visiting each Brokerage profile. This givesManaging Brokers an opportunity to begin a dialogue with a truly interested, warm recruiting prospect that is making a career move. Realty Connection has an internal CRM that manages Realty Connection leads and allows Managing Brokers to upload and manage their current recruiting prospects they acquire on their own.
There are over 2,000,000 register real estate agents and over 100,000 real estate offices according to the National Association of Realtors. In California alone, there are over 250,000 agents and over 20,000 offices. The real estate market is highly fragmented and agents tend to move offices frequently as they are independent contractors. There is no centralized clearing house for managing brokers and agents to share information to facilitate the transient labor market.
Although there may be other recruiting “tools” available (CRM’s, lead generators), there is no resource that connects Managing Brokerage to Agents in realtime and allows immediate communication and sharing of information. Because Realty Connection is the very first of its kind we have secured important strategic partnerships based on mutual benefit. Realty Connection has partnered with Kaplan Real Estate Schools and OnCourse Learning, the largest real estate schools in the country and many otherlicensing schools who are directing soon-to-be licensed students to our site. We have also partnered with Fidelity National Financial, the largest title group in the country. Theirsales executives are sharing the Realty Connection value proposition with their existing clients as a way to enhance or create their business relationships. We also have marketing relationships with three State Realtor Associations (including California, the largest Association in the country, Colorado, and Nevada) who market to both real estate Brokerages as well as real estate agents in their state. Lastly, we have secured a relationship withTerradatum, the largest real estate data mining company that enhances our site with sales data specific to agents so Managing Brokers gain a better understanding about their recruiting prospects. Our relationships give us a competitive advantage and have helped us expand into 40 states in less than two years.
Realty Connection charges a re-occurring monthly or annual fee per office from participating Managing Brokerages that have loaded office profiles on the Realty Connection site. The re-occurring fee increases if the Managing Broker wants to use some of the more enhanced recruiting tools on the site. We charge a nominal set up fee. There are untapped revenue streamswe have identified that we will begin marketing as soon at traffic on our site for each market reaches meaningful levels. These other revenue opportunities include sale of regional banner ads, referral fees for agent services provided by third parties such as coaching and on-going educational classes, agent transition packages for new signs and cards, and a host of other third party products that can be marketed to agents through our site.
Once we reach critical mass in a particular market, the remaining real estate offices will have little choice but to subscribe as our site will be the central gathering point where managing brokers and agents can meet each other. Adding additional office profiles to the site is cost effective as the managing broker provides and uploads all the information. The more offices that are loaded, the more powerful our site becomes.
We evaluate ourselves on the following metrics: percentage of office profiles in a particular market and number of new agents visiting our site in a particular market each month. For the site to be the default choice for recruiting agents and for agents to find the right managing broker, our goal is to capture at least 50% of the real estate offices for each regional market. By forming alliances with the State Realtor Associations, proper marketing and our agreements with the largest real estate licensing schools, we strongly believe were are on the path to achieve this goal within three years.
Realty Connection is a product created for the Real Estate industry by Real Estate professionals who have had hands on, direct experience with the challenges of recruiting. Each player on the team has their own unique area of expertise in the industry including experience as Managing Broker, Recruiter, CFO, and Realtor. This gives us the unique understanding of the challenges faced by both Real Estate Brokerages and Real Estate Agents.
Dan Gerlock our CEO was a top agent at Coldwell Banker winning the President’s Premier Sales Honor award, the highest sales award given by Coldwell Banker. He moved on at Coldwell Banker to manage and train 300 agents in a top regional office. He was recruited away from Coldwell Banker to become Vice President General Manager for RealEstate.com to opened several brick and mortar offices. Zip Realty hired Dan on as Director of Sales and lastly he was the Regional Director for ERA Herman Group. Dan’s career encompass the perspectives of both markets Realty Connection is targeting: managing brokers growing their offices and agents looking to make the right choices in their career. Dan is a closer and is responsible landing our significant partnerships.
Mike Abeyta, our COO, also has an extensive history in real estate. He is both a licensed agent and most recently, a recruiter at the ERA Herman Group. Mike’s time as a recruiter for one of the largest brands in real estate provides Realty Connection a valuable understanding of the data our web site needs to attract agents and managing brokers. Mike works directly with the web design team and is the creative force behind the basic website, the CRM platform, the banner ad program and our relationships with Reach150 and Broker Metrics.
Linda Michelson is our CMO. In addition to being an accomplished real estate agent, Linda has successfully owned and operated four health clubs in Colorado and Arizona where she managed 18 full time and 65 part-time employees. Anything not related to closing a partnership or the design of the web site, falls to Linda. She oversees the cold call sales force, schedules and hosts the webinar demonstrations and training sessions, plans all our conference events.
Paul Wiesner is a director and significant investor. Paul’s real estate experience stems from his tenure as the CFO for Coldwell Banker Residential of Colorado. At Coldwell Banker, he managed the budget and financial reporting for 22 regional offices containing of 2000 agents. Coldwell Banker experienced a $4MM swing in profitability during his three year term. After Coldwell Banker, Paul returned to the oil and gas industry as the CFO for two publicly traded companies and one private company. He raised in excess of $500MM in equity and $200MM in debt. He participated in the sales process of one company for $1.05B. Paul brings his financial, legal and organizations skill to Realty Connection to help guide the three founders to success.
Thank you for considering Realty Connection for your investment portfolio. Please contact us to learn more about how we market, discuss our 12 month and 24 month business plan forecast, get updated on the latest programing developments and our market growth.
