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« Today's Bad News Brought to You by PMI | Main | Looking For Good News Anywhere I Can Find It... » April 16, 2008It's All Starting to Make SenseOver the past few months I’ve noticed agents jumping from the bigger and better know brokerages to some of the smaller, boutique firms. I’ll be honest, it didn’t make a lot of sense to me at first. But today I happened to be at one of the aforementioned boutique firms when a fairly notable agent came walking in. He was there to talk about switching offices. But he wasn’t the first big-name I’d seen at this office because agents with Frank Howard Allen and Pacific Union had been stopping by too. The agent I saw yesterday said he felt the real estate was shifting and the boutique firms were better positioned to respond. I’m hearing that a lot from agents. Just recently two office managers for prominent That’s because their corporate offices were pitching a new business model to them based on ditching branch offices for one central office, a small support staff and a conference room. The office would be for agents to pick up documents and forms and talk with a broker if necessary. The broker said offices just aren’t necessary because anyone should be able to do business from their homes. So as bigger offices buy up the smaller players, more folks are jumping ship to a boutique. And that means boutiques are growing too. Over in Marin, folks like Vision Real Estate and Morgan Lane are expanding. Morgan announced recently its fourth office would open in Mill Valley and Vision now counts four strong with offices in Corte Madera, Santa Rosa, Mill Valley and San Francisco.
Posted by Jeff Brooks on April 16, 2008 07:07 AM | Permalink TrackBackTrackBack URL for this entry: CommentsHere's my take: First, I sniff suspiciously at the "getting rid of deadwood" comment. The market is creating the deadwood, such as there is, and the bubble supported a lot of it. This sounds more like sour grapes than anything else. In this post-bubble environment, costs matter. Big corporate operations are unwieldy and expensive. Small operations, like mammals in a dinosaur world, are able to respond faster and more accurately to changing conditions. Of course the independent, fully wired, home office agent is most nimble of all in this paradigm.
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Bill Quick |
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I'm affiliated with a boutique firm and love the flexibility. But in your opinion, how are boutique brokerages better able to respond to the changing market?
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| April 16, 2008 04:06 PM