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 might supply a blueprint for different independents dealing with consolidation stress.
As brokerage consolidation accelerates throughout the trade, Brown Harris Stevens and FirstTeam have chosen a unique path — a multi-year advertising and marketing partnership designed to broaden attain and share purchaser swimming pools with no 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 corporations are members of Main Actual Property Firms 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 assume we even deliberate it, and we talked for like 45 minutes,” Leone stated.
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 adjustments that include consolidation.
“We don’t have to work collectively by way of M&A,” Leone stated. “We might work collectively by way of like-minded thought management, collaboration and cooperative advertising and marketing methods that serve our consumer finest.”
Leone stated the partnership can be meant as a direct counterweight to personal itemizing fragmentation, a rising trade debate involving the rise of off-market itemizing networks.
“If you look to broaden your purchaser swimming pools and be as public as you may together with your out there stock, that may be a counterweight to a present pattern that’s going down inside this trade proper now, which is non-public itemizing, community fragmentation,” he stated.
Lauren Henss
Henss stated independence offers each corporations 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 stated.
That agility, Henss stated, permits the 2 corporations to ship one thing the large field brokerages can not.
“We’re nonetheless [providing] the boutique stage of service for our brokers, however with a scalability that the large field brokerages can not present,” she stated. “We design significant careers. We do this for our brokers.”
Each executives stated the partnership is meant as a mannequin for different independently held corporations weighing choices as consolidation stress mounts.
“Consolidation is just not your solely choice down the road, as a result of you could have two thriving, privately held brokerages which are making selections which are hopefully making a template for a way others might function for years to return,” Leone stated.
Henss put it merely: “Fairly than consolidation, it’s collaboration.”
BHS CEO Bess Freedman stated in a press release that the partnership broadens providers at a second when consolidation is limiting selection for consumers, sellers and brokers. FirstTeam CEO Michele Harrington stated brokerages centered on long-term progress ought to discover methods to align relatively than compete.
For brokers at each corporations, Henss had a direct message: “Prepare, as a result of that is one of the best of each worlds.”
