Welcome to Prime + Property!

It's been almost a month already since we decided to open up our own brokerage.  

Since I began my career nearly 17 years ago, a lot has changed in the Real Estate industry.  

Heck, when I first started, the internet was not even used for looking up homes - there was a literal book we had to flip through on homes to read about them.  Imagine that today.  Planning a course of homes to view and mapping them was a chore in itself and without GPS, seeing homes in the winter at night was very difficult.  

Fast forward to today when tech is up front and center with our industry.  I watched over the progression of my career and noted the evolution of a Realtor.  When I began, the type of Realtor was vastly different than what we commonly see today.  Agents under 30 were exceptionally rare when I began, but are common now.  Many brokerages were archaic and charged high fees and offered little to no training.  Starting out as a new Realtor then was daunting and still to this day has an exceptionally high failure rate of nearly 80%. 

I began with a large brokerage firm and then felt the value of a name brand.  Yet over the years, the value of a big brand name (and the fees associated) became less clear.  Brokerage splits, broker fees, advertising fees, compliance fees, insurance fees, sign fees, blah blah - you name it, it was pricey and expensive - and for what?  I began to question: do consumers today really care what name was above mine on the sign? Is the client hiring me, or the company I worked for? Is the money I am paying worth it? It became increasingly clear that answer was no, and that the future needed to be restructured to be Agent forward, not Broker forward.

Over the years I took notes of the things that I disliked about the industry.  The showboating, the buying of helicopters, boats, eating caviar, boasting on social media about the amazing car they now drive or the massive compound they now live in, etc. The HGTV shows boasting of this lifestyle has not and will not help our consumer image.  Even today, brokerages hide under the guise of promoting a Realtor but making them dependant on the brokerage so it would be painful to leave.  They didn't teach skills - they foster an era of dependance.  Brokerages and Realtors of certain large companies recruit endlessly with a perpetual carrot dangling status, stock options, bonuses, and more - all the while forgetting what should be most important to them:  The Client.    

I wanted to start something more efficient for the Realtor themselves.  Provide the support and tools to help one be successful, but also focus on the actual Client themselves, not who the next Realtor then can recruit in to make more, or what their company stock price is at, or what percentage of their fee is going to a broker they've never met, will never meet, can't get on the phone and who will never know them by name. I wanted to provide a place to sit, a place to talk, a place to brainstorm.  A place to feel at home. A place of welcoming.  With that, we became Prime + Property.  Welcome home.