Last week, I wrote a blog post asking, “What does your firm do to pay it back?” and asked for stories from other brokerages and received a couple of responses worth sharing. The Century 21 partnership with Easterseals started in 1979, and since that time, C21 independent franchisees and affiliated sales professionals donated $123 million to Easterseals.
In an email blast to Century 21 brokers and agents today, Century 21 released the Golden Ruler powered by ListTrac®, a reporting tool that allows sellers, agents, and brokers to see the engagement that a property is getting across the Internet.
In the media, you hear that Compass is a traditional brokerage driven by incredible technology that gives their agents an advantage in the marketplace. Frankly, I have registered for Compass’ website and mobile apps as a consumer and have not experienced anything extraordinary yet. We will continue to watch how they evolve their technology. It takes a very long time to do this, especially if you are trying to keep up with the data integrations driven by their market growth. Compass has Ori Allon as their Founder and Chairman. He founded Orion (search algorithm company acquired by Google), and Julpan (a product that analyzes social information on social media, acquired by Twitter). We have not seen Compass reinvent real estate search or do anything that integrates advanced social integrations yet. But it is part of the founder’s DNA. I am looking forward to what they bring to market.
I will always vividly remember riding to a meeting with a large broker in Marin County, California back in 2002ish. We were discussing the brutal competition among brokers in Marin County. At the time, Keller Williams did not have much of a presence in San Francisco or Marin. I was wondering why Keller Williams had failed to grow as they have in other markets. Moreover, Century 21 was conspicuously missing from the market altogether. Coldwell Banker was huge, along with Pacific Union. A bunch of independent brands like Frank Howard Allen and Melissa Bradley Real Estate were performing well in upper Marin. Decker Bullock held their own with the large firms in Southern Marin.
Century 21 is cool. And that is a new thing for a 40-year-old real estate brand. I purchased my primary home from a Century 21 agent because of the agent, not because of the brand. However, in the past few years, Century 21 started looking cool. Being a cynic and a skeptic, I did not really believe that they were cool. Sotheby’s is luxury, Coldwell Banker is business, BH&G is lifestyle, ERA is old school, and Century 21 is Middle America. None of those brands are cool. That changed for me today. WAV Group works with lots of brokers. They [...]
Century 21 announced today that it will provide its U.S.-based real estate professionals with new tools from Market Leader including marketing, lead follow-up and a full CRM platform. Market Leader and the CENTURY 21 marketing team worked together to define a customized solution, leveraging a number of the integrated building blocks that make up Market Leader’s comprehensive software platform. The base system that will be provided to all agents at no cost while advanced capabilities will be available for high-end producers at a small premium. PRESS RELEASE […]
