Kris Berg warms up to Zillow! “they are doing it right” “I mean I used to think they were a soulless abomination, but now I just see them as an abomination”.

In related news, the Pope declared that it’s Atheists can be Catholic too, and President Bush was noted as saying “Well, maybe Iraq wasn’t such a good idea.”

This works for two reasons. One, we only have six very experienced and independent agents that have been with us from the beginning. I don’t need to train them, I simply need to keep them current with the changing market and laws. And two, we have fixed monthly expenses that are very modest. Because we only have eight agents total, the paper work and administrative duties which are split between myself and my partner are very manageable and leave plenty of time for the real income producing activities of selling houses myself.

If we wish to increase our income , we do it by increasing our personal production and NOT by adding additional agents. I have had an administrative assistant helping me in the past, but this past year I have been able to do most of it myself. With our monthly costs fixed, we have been able to survive the downturn just fine and the company is making a profit.

First, I apologize for the late response. (I have had to do that a lot lately.)

That’s an excellent question and one that Steve and I have spent many a date night discussing. (For the record, we don’t have “date nights.” We just talk shop while we do dishes, but I digress.)

Honestly, I am not sure I am qualified to answer that question, primarily because we are working brokers operating under a different sort of model.

Our goal in creating our own independent brokerage wasn’t to create a profit center which would allow us to manage our business while vacationing in the Hamptons. We were and continue to be active, working agents ourselves. Independence gave us opportunities, for ourselves and our clients, which weren’t available under the big brokerage umbrella. In other words, it was never (directly) about the money.

But with any brokerage, there is a need for a little critical mass. Depth is important — for support, coverage, even camaraderie. So, even the leanest and meanest can’t avoid the managerial and training duties, if even on a smaller scale.

In that context, here is our model in a nutshell. Think of it as a “co-op” of sorts. Our agents commit to customer and team loyalty, they commit to the highest standard of integrity, knowledge and service. In return, we carry the administrative burden and incur the increased liability, we meet regularly (as does any office) to discuss new laws, contracts, and disclosure requirements, and we provide the most current technological tools to enable them to stay contemporary and meet the demands of an evolving customer base. Because we are working agents ourselves, we respect their personal branding (to the extent they want it, and not all agents do) and business goals. In other words, we treat them as we have always wanted to be treated — as independent CEO’s who hang their license with us at their pleasure.

We, foolishly perhaps, do not wish to see our agents as profit centers but as colleagues who strengthen our collective through the ways in which they conduct their business and serve their clients.

The key to the real question, though, the one about keeping costs down while helping the agents succeed is, for us, this. We have this contrarian approach. We do not want to be a new agent training camp. We do not want to spend our days and nights recruiting, and we are committed to being selective. There are simply far too many experienced, passionate, great agents out there, and those are the agents who might find our model a good fit. Or not. In the meantime, we have shunned the big, shiny building meant to impress for the modest but efficient office. We offer generous splits in return for the expectation that the independent contractors, the agents, will take responsibility for their own businesses and their own successes. We show them the options and opportunities, but it is up to each of them to make hay.

We keep costs down by eliminating the non-essentials. We don’t work out of the back of a pick-up truck, but we don’t need excess, and excess no longer impresses. Being virtually virtual isn’t practical, but being virtually antiquated is a death sentence. We promote and preach certain practices (such as “paperless” transactions) that are not only efficient and cost effective but a convenience for and applauded by our clients.

I guess the bottom line is that our Pollyanna approach wouldn’t work for the big corporate overlord. But we are agents first, and our model allows us to surround ourselves with other agents who have similar goals and values.

If you were going to turn your indep brokerage into one that had 20-30 solid agents that just didn’t want to start their own brokerage, what would you do that would make their lives easier while still keeping costs down and splits high?