Tuesday, December 23, 2025

Define Your Brokerage

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Stepping Into The Future

Photo Courtesy

Signs, Video, Maps, GeoCoding, Mashups, IDX, RSS, Social Media & Twitter

Next year is going to bring a lot of changes to the real estate industry, and one of the constant conversations I’m having now is – what would your brokerage look like? Here’s my starter list –

Awesome signage for listings – signs are part of the foundation of real estate marketing, but I haven’t seen anything like this in my market.

– Video tours, photos, floorplans for all listings – simple to promise and systematize.

– Small brokerage, possibly broker-only, perhaps some higher level education component

– Menu-style commissions – let the consumers and the Realtors negotiate rather than rely on the MLS offering – mimic upfront mortgage brokers

– Embrace transparency

– Go paperless, a la Kris Berg

– Get consumers to use our search tool – and only our search tool

Implement a VOW

– Encourage associates to participate in the Local, State and National Associations

– No print marketing. Ever. (It’s environmentally friendly and fiscally responsible)

– Work as a team – sort of a hybrid of the white label brokerage.

– Have a company blog – internal and external – to ensure that we’re all reading important stuff. Publish really important stuff as well.

– Stay flexible, adaptable and able to re-invent every quarter, if necessary.

– Publish economic analyses quarterly

This is a start – what would your list look like? What tools would you have in your toolbox?

Having just finished Made to Stick, this statement stuck with me –

“We don’t want to be first, but we sure as hell don’t want to be third.”

jimduncan
jimduncan
Dad, Husband, Charlottesville Realtor, real estate Blogger, occasional speaker - Inman Connects, NAR Conferences - based in Charlottesville, Virginia. A native Virginian, I graduated from VMI in 1998, am a third generation Realtor (since 2001) and have been "publishing" as a real estate blogger since January 2005. I've chosen to get involved in Realtor Associations on the local, state & national levels, having served on the NAR's RPR & MLS groups. Find me in Charlottesville, Crozet and Twitter.

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