Company shakeup
This spring, we introduced you to real estate brokerage, CondoDomain.com noting the company was “traditional meets sexy” and praised their “1×1 theory” wherein their agents focus on a specific part of the city and know every detail of every building, especially condos and noted their centralized support and a focus on tech tools for their agents was a praiseworthy model.
Although their 20 percent “cash back” incentive used as a retention tool for clientele was not in the top reasons we originally said the company has it “right” while others have it “wrong,” but removal of the incentive does change their core offering and identity. Additionally, it is curious that in their statement regarding removal of incentives, the company noted they had “shelled out more than $1.2M” which is barely higher than the $1 million mark announced in April of 2011. It appears the incentives have either slowed down or their volume of buyers has slowed down, but to hit such a major milestone in April then barely move above that mark in eight months is noteworthy.
This fall, for reasons still undisclosed, there was a shakeup at the executive level with the President, Hoyt Morgan, leaving the company and Founder Anthony Longo taking over the reins again. Originally, the site acted as a mortgage broker for developers then transitioned into selling leads (which is why they still have a web presence in many cities where their brokerage does not exist) and matured into a full brokerage with national aspirations. Now, the company has announced in a statement that they will no longer offer rebates. Could this be yet another pivot, another iteration for the company?
The company will continue to operate in opposition to the legacy brokerages in the industry and tells AGBeat they have exciting things to announce soon, so while rebates are disappearing and a shakeup has gone down, they say they are focused, but it is clear that the company may be taking another pivot.
Statement from CondoDomain:
“As of January 1, 2012, CondoDomain will be eliminating its “cash back” incentive as it had previously offered its buyer clientele.Since becoming a broker just over 2 years ago, we had made a splash with the very much “industry” frowned upon “rebate” or “refund” business model giving back 20% of our commission to our buyer clients. As a business decision to attract new clients and keep our current clients coming back, giving away such a nice “closing gift” (everyone loves cash, right?) seemed to be the simplest and best business decision at the time. Well, now looking back on it and have shelled out more than $1.2M (yes, $1,200,000), we have determined to put that 20% into our end product and invest into becoming a better company, with better technology, better agents – because that is what our current clients have told us what is most important in the homebuying experience.
To that end – please don’t lob us into the “traditional brokerage” bucket. We never were a tradtiaionl [sic] brokerage and we never will be. Look for CondoDomain to do some very cool things on the web this year and some really great things on the street.”
