Does size really matter? Really?

Our healthcare provider has some eight billion members and is trying to pull off a family doctor image program. My mother, my wife and I all have the same last name. My family doctor doesn’t remember it.

When I was in high school many years ago my family moved from a tiny town where I had 16 classmates in my sophomore class to Seattle and a high school where my junior class had 1500 members. Talk about culture shock!

Is a bigger company better in real estate? Can the big companies provide you better anything? Let’s examine the claims.

National Branding: OK I’m waiting. If your home has a big company name on the sign in the front yard is that going to help sell your house? Are they buying the company? The typical buyer would like to buy your house and I don’t think it matters what company has it listed.

Nation Wide Network: Most real estate companies belong to a national relocation network of some kind or another the big companies happen to own their own.

One Stop Shopping: Some of the new large company business models include title and mortgage companies. They do this so you can come to one place and get all of your real estate needs taken care of under one roof. More like one profit center. Huge potential for RSPA violations and conflicts of interest!

A Whole Lot of Agents: Is that a good thing? You only get one per transaction. You better have a reliable reference because they are all acting as little independent businesses.

Now let’s look at a smaller company option.

Closer Brokerage supervision: The broker is an important part of a real estate transaction. They oversee and check each agent’s work. Kind of like a student/teacher ratio is important so is a broker/agent ratio.

Personalized service: Fewer agent transactions = more time devoted to each transaction

Tighter company policy: In a company of 5 it is easier to maintain a company policy across every level of service. In a company of 100 the broker may not see some of his agents over the course of a month.

National Relocation Network: Ours has 2500 member brokers, we can relocate you anywhere.

First class web site: The key to any marketing website is how it comes up on the search engines ours http://www.agentmikel.com/ comes up before the big brokers most of the time.

Ok , I rest my case. You need to sell your house? Come see us.

Scott