Debbie Simmonds, left, and Victoria Harnum
By Christina Pellegrini
What has your broker done for you lately? Have their tools, support systems and structures helped you succeed? Are the benefits of your affiliation greater than the costs?
Debbie Simmonds, a Realtor on Vancouver Island, asked herself the same questions. The answers: there wasn’t any free sales training at the big-name brokerage she was working for, managers didn’t offer performance feedback and the listing fund she’d been contributing to rarely led to new leads. Those answers prompted a life-changing career move.
Fees and commissions were “digging into my pocket month after month,” says Simmonds, who worked in British Columbia’s forestry industry for 19 years before she got her real estate license and joined a big-name brokerage in 2001. “But I really had enough of that program. The conventional commission model is broken.”
So she got her broker’s license, left the brokerage, turned down a job offer from another big-name real estate company and partnered with Alberta-based financial education and investment firm Fast Track Group. She opened the company’s first real estate office in British Columbia last December, Fast Forward Real Estate. Today, she is a member of five real estate boards and is the managing broker of a growing team in B.C. and Alberta.
Affordable and effective online advertising platforms have enabled and empowered real estate professionals to get their broker’s license, open their own independent brokerages and compete head-to-head with traditional real estate models. Through unconventional marketing plans, enhanced customer service and new business models, small brokers are proving that going it alone can be profitable.
At Fast Forward Real Estate, Simmonds offers clients three distinct marketing plans—basic, enhanced and full service—with a list of prescribed services at a fixed cost, some of which is paid for up front, and charges clients commission fees lower than five per cent. The model, she says, is more transparent for clients, doesn’t “alienate the real estate community” and helps keeps costs down for both parties.
“A Realtor can spend upwards of $3,000 to list a property and they’re choking on all that cost until the sale is made,” Simmonds says, describing the conventional marketing and payment models. “The listing can just expire and the client can go to another Realtor.”
People who’ve purchased the enhanced marketing plan can save $5,000 on a $500,000 home or $7,500 in savings with the basic marketing plan, Fast Forward Real Estate advertises. “By keeping Realtors’ costs down,” Simmonds says, “those savings can then be passed down to our clients.”
Fast Track Group, the parent company of Fast Forward Real Estate, also operates tax, investment and mortgage divisions in western Canada. The company offers Simmonds reduced overhead costs and fees, a support staff and an internal database with more than 93,000 contacts.
“What made me really sad when I came into this industry is that I saw Realtors doing our basic plan and then charging full commission,” Simmonds says. “Fast Forward is a different mindset of how to do real estate.”
She isn’t the only one who’s trying to go against the status quo.
Victoria Harnum, owner of Dream Realty in Carbonear, Nfld., got her broker’s license in 2010 after working at two big-name brokerages for five years. “I was working so hard and I was giving almost half of my money to the broker,” she says. “You don’t end up with much at the end of the year.”
Instead of joining an established franchise, Harnum created a new company, purchased a URL, hired a designer to create a website for her new company (to accompany her personal website) and a logo, and set up an office in her home.
“I’m the salesperson and the broker,” she says, adding that most of her leads are generated from online search engine results to her own webpage, not from her listings on the real estate board’s website. “I’m saving thousands and thousands of dollars.”
Harnum says big-name brokerages that offer lots of sales training and support systems are great for new agents, for people who want to “learn how things actually work” and for those who need an extra push to sell. Her decision to go independent three years ago comes down to fewer fees, less bureaucracy and more control over her personal brand.
“I get to keep all the commission now,” she says.
If you wanted a property to be noticed 10 years ago, you had to pay for expensive and coveted print and television advertisements – and usually, the large brokerages were the big buyers of these spots, she says. “The biggest thing is finding you and your listings. You have to have the listings too. If you don’t, there’s nothing to see.”
Harnum and Simmonds are proof that a client’s relationship is with their Realtor, not the brokerage. Look at where your own leads and sales are coming from, whether from referrals, search engine results or the brokerage’s listings fund, and determine how many are self-generated or a consequence of your affiliation with your big-name brokerage.
“Agents need to think very carefully about who they work for and their start-up costs,” Simmonds says. “And they need to interview the broker, not the other way around.”
