Above, Bill Flemming
Bill Flemming
CEO
HomeSmart Connect
Arlington Heights, Illinois
https://join.homesmart.com
Region served: Northern Illinois (Chicago) and Southern Wisconsin
Years in real estate: 39
Number of offices: 10, with another set to open before the end of the year.
Number of agents: 807
Best time-management tip: Cut out the noise and focus on what you’re doing.
What is the most important thing you learned this past year?
The significance of doing what everybody else isn’t doing. While everybody else was cutting back, I was opening offices and adding support staff. I saw the market slowing down, and my fear was that my core was going to slow down, which would cause both my agent count and transaction count to slow down as well. The year prior was a very strong year for me, so I took the initiative to use a down market to grow, and I opened two new offices. And I think the agents like seeing that momentum. They like seeing that growth, and they want to be a part of the energy.
What is one unique challenge you and your firm have been faced with over the last few years, and how have you adapted?
The biggest thing, to be honest, is today’s litigious real estate environment. Being in the news with the whole NAR suit and everything, everyone’s first inclination when they feel that something is wrong is to file a lawsuit and go after the real estate company. To combat this challenge, we focused on bulking up our compliance standards while making sure things were done in a very specific way. Doubling down on compliance was critically important to ensure that neither my agents nor I were getting sued.
What is the most significant trend that’s positively affecting your business right now?
I haven’t made a lot of moves in this direction, but we’re seeing a lot of consolidation in the industry today—with brokers merging, selling or even blending. I’ve owned franchises for 30 years now, so I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’m getting a lot of calls from competing brokers inquiring as to whether we’re open to merging or buying them outright. Part of the challenge is that the days of real estate companies selling for four, five or six times their earnings are long gone. Nobody’s paying that kind of money today. But I’d love to buy a bunch of them if I think it would be realistic as far as price.
In what ways do you see the industry evolving throughout the remainder of the year?
In addition to the majority of the market still being down, we’re also seeing agents leaving the business—and while they aren’t leaving in droves, the membership numbers are depleting. At the same time, I believe the quality of the agent is improving, because the people you see getting out of the industry are the ones doing one or two transactions a year.
How does your company make its agents’ jobs easier?
For us, with HomeSmart, it’s easy: It’s the tools that we offer. In addition to our contract management and marketing systems being online, we also link to YouTube, and agents can create their Facebook and social media ads right on our system—so as soon as the property is listed, it syncs with the MLS. While agents can still use their custom materials, with the click of a button, 90% of their marketing is automatically completed for them in the software. From completely redoing our marketing design center, to improving the direct links for social media and adding free e-Signature to our back-office portal, HomeSmart is going all in, and they’re really doing a nice job.
For more information, visit https://join.homesmart.com.
