EubieV & The Street,
A little background. I do mainly real estate loans with a mortgage broker who also has a Homelife Francise in the same office. The Loan side is not affiliated with Homelife. An office which I was with in '93 joined Homelife after the owner was approached by the Homelife people trying to sell franchise's. At first most of the agents were against joining, as we liked being independent and figured that if we had wanted to belong to a franchise, then we would have joined C21 or one of the other big franchise's. We agreed to listen to a pitch from Homelife and were sold on the concept. They are very persuasive and have a great marketing plan. That office "merged" with my current office (I say "merged" but it really went out of business in 94, along with about half of the mortgage business in Southern California.) The owner worked out a deal with the owner of my current office to encourage his agents to transfer, which most of us did on the condition that the new office become a Homelife franchise.
A few highlights to differentiate Homelife with the other big companies:
1. Family orientation. You would think that someone else would have done this, but they did not. Homelife has a unique emphasis on the family. This includes a "Children's bill of rights" and other posters which are very moving. You really need to see these posters to get the idea. My clients love these posters and several have requested copies. It immediately establishes a bond of trust between my clients who like children ( and there are very few people that I have met who do not like children) nd myself. With those posters on the wall clients think that you are a wonderful person, and there is an almost instant bond of trust between the client and the agent. This is more important than you can imagine if you have not been in the business. Just ask any real estate agent who has spent weeks showing a client property only to have that client buy from someone else.
2. Mascots. Homelife has a mascot, Jerome the Gnome. Just think what Ronald McDonald did for McDonalds. Same concept. At the old office we would go to swap meets or fairs with a Jerome the Gnome costume and get the kids to come over for a picture. The parents followed. Of course we had to get a name, address, and phone number so we could mail the picture when it was developed. In this business, that is what is called a "warm lead", and another name to be put on the mailing list. Some of my collegues still have clients from five years ago that the originally met using these techniques.
3. No cold calling. Don't you hate getting those in the middle of dinner calls from real estate agents? Using these other lead generating techniques, cold calling is not necessary. This is a major selling point to bring in new agents, as the only thing worse than getting a cold call is having to do it several hundred times.
I had a friend at C21 who bragged about how he was required to make so many cold calls per week. He was very proud of it, and said that agents got kicked out of the office if they did not cold call. Ugh.
4. Low franchise fees. The fees are about 2 1/2% off the top of every transaction. At C21 they are around a whopping 8%; ouch. I am not sure what this does to Homelife's bottom line, but it sure helps recruit agents.
Since I do mostly mortgage loans, and since the refi business is so hot right now, I have not had to agressively look for business for a long time, and so do not take advantage of the Homelife sales programs as much as we used to. Almost everything I do is from referrals, the best warm lead of all. But for agents that are starting out, Homelife is a great way to go. All IMHO
This message came out a lot longer than intended! Hope there is some useful information in it for you! (It is late, forgive any spelling errors!!!)
Great Investing to All,
STEVE |
