Two of the nation’s largest impartial brokerages are becoming a member of forces on a multi-year advertising and marketing partnership — and say the mannequin may provide a blueprint for different independents dealing with consolidation strain.
As brokerage consolidation accelerates throughout the trade, Brown Harris Stevens and FirstTeam have chosen a special path — a multi-year advertising and marketing partnership designed to develop attain and share purchaser swimming pools with out a merger or acquisition.
The deal unites two of the nation’s largest independently held brokerages, representing greater than 5,000 brokers throughout greater than 70 workplaces in New York, New Jersey, Florida, Connecticut, California, Arizona and Washington. Each companies are members of Main Actual Property Corporations of the World.
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The partnership grew out of an unplanned dialog at an Inman occasion, the place Brown Harris Stevens Chief Advertising Officer Matthew Leone and FirstTeam Vice President of Advertising Lauren Henss crossed paths at a pop-up recording studio.
“I don’t suppose we even deliberate it, and we talked for like 45 minutes,” Leone mentioned.
Matthew Leone
From that dialog got here a technique to construct cross-marketing initiatives, shared promoting, public relations and referral networks — with out the structural modifications that include consolidation.
“We don’t have to work collectively by means of M&A,” Leone mentioned. “We may work collectively by means of like-minded thought management, collaboration and cooperative advertising and marketing methods that serve our shopper finest.”
Leone mentioned the partnership can be supposed as a direct counterweight to personal itemizing fragmentation, a rising trade debate involving the rise of off-market itemizing networks.
“Once you look to broaden your purchaser swimming pools and be as public as you may together with your accessible stock, that may be a counterweight to a present pattern that’s happening inside this trade proper now, which is personal itemizing, community fragmentation,” he mentioned.
Lauren Henss
Henss mentioned independence offers each companies an operational benefit bigger, franchise-affiliated brokerages can not match.
“We are able to activate a dime when Matt and I have to do one thing from a advertising and marketing marketing campaign or one thing that advantages them … versus having to get board approval and all that type of stuff,” she mentioned.
That agility, Henss mentioned, permits the 2 companies to ship one thing the large field brokerages can not.
“We’re nonetheless [providing] the boutique degree of service for our brokers, however with a scalability that the large field brokerages can not present,” she mentioned. “We design significant careers. We do this for our brokers.”
Each executives mentioned the partnership is meant as a mannequin for different independently held companies weighing choices as consolidation strain mounts.
“Consolidation isn’t your solely choice down the road, as a result of you will have two thriving, privately held brokerages which can be making selections which can be hopefully making a template for a way others may function for years to come back,” Leone mentioned.
Henss put it merely: “Slightly than consolidation, it’s collaboration.”
BHS CEO Bess Freedman mentioned in a press release that the partnership broadens providers at a second when consolidation is limiting alternative for patrons, sellers and brokers. FirstTeam CEO Michele Harrington mentioned brokerages targeted on long-term development ought to discover methods to align moderately than compete.
For brokers at each companies, Henss had a direct message: “Prepare, as a result of that is the perfect of each worlds.”
