Above, Ryan Jonke
Ryan Jonke
Managing Broker/Owner
JPAR® – Modern Real Estate
Arvada, Colorado
Region served: Denver Front Range
Years in real estate: 25
Number of offices: 1
Number of agents: 170
Favorite part of your job: Teaching agents—whether that’s informing them as to what’s going on in the market or teaching them about contracts. I also enjoy supporting my agents when they have questions through conversations about strategy and what needs to be done. You’d be surprised as to what you can get out of a discussion, so we encourage our agents to call us if they’re not 100% sure about something.
Most important thing you learned this year: The significance of getting everyone back to being true professionals. While there was a bit of laziness caused by the pandemic era and how easy it was to navigate our market during that time, we’re doubling down on getting agents to understand that they have to know their value and be able to display it. If they want to be successful, they have to be knowledgeable about the real estate landscape while also understanding who today’s buyers and sellers are, and what they’re looking for in an agent.
What do you like most about the region in which you work?
Colorado, especially the Denver metro area, is insulated from the big dips and swings we see across the United States—which is one of the things I love about this area. In fact, we can look at our growth charts for the last 100 years and find trends that help us understand what our property is going to do, which helps us sell the dream a little bit better for those who are looking to buy. Is this a down market? Am I overpaying? Is it going to keep going down? By looking at our historical data, we’re able to show prospective buyers that while we’re going to experience dips and valleys—they’re not going to be huge—and you’re going to gain a lot of that equity back a lot faster. Colorado is a great state, and there are a ton of people who want to live and relocate here and stay here, so I think that really helps us.
With a successful career as the owner of your own brokerage under your belt, what ultimately attracted you to JPAR?
As a decent-sized brokerage, I had been talking to folks for a couple of years, as I had already begun to see the writing on the wall. While I wasn’t big enough to really leverage our numbers to get better, I’ve always been a flat-fee brokerage (even before JPAR)—and so I was collecting big percentages, which made it harder to reinvest and give agents what they want. If I was ever going to franchise, there were certain things I wanted the company to align themselves with me on, and when JPAR knocked on my door, they actually checked a lot of the boxes. I wasn’t going to go anywhere that had traditional splits, and I needed to align with a company that was heavily invested in technology, and those things really attracted me to JPAR. The fact that they could put together such an amazing value proposition while still keeping costs low was huge for me.
How does your company make its agents’ jobs easier?
Through our concierge support, which is available all the way from our simple onboarding process. We have people that are available throughout the week to help agents who may be struggling up until the point where you could be a very hands-on (managing everything themselves) or hands-off (letting the company handle almost everything) broker. Or they can choose a higher flat-fee option where the company helps with tasks such as transaction management, marketing and other services. We offer both approaches that you’re going to get from a flat-fee brokerage all the way up to a full-service traditional brokerage.
The other part of it involves helping our agents become the best real estate professional they can be, which extends further than being the most popular or being the most visible on social media. We can provide more value through education and experience, ensuring our agents are aware of what’s going on in the market and how they should be looking at it versus how they’ve always looked at it.
How is your brokerage using technology to better serve clients?
While technology was one of the main things that attracted me to JPAR, it’s important to note that a lot of our technology is business based, as our sales professionals are more than simply agents. They’re business owners. They have to work their business, which isn’t the fun part—as that’s not where you’re seeing immediate results—but that’s the part that’s going to grow consistency. So a lot of our tools and technology allow them to grow their business and scale it a lot faster. Do they have tools to help manage their finances? Do they have mileage trackers? Do they have a way to keep their books to ensure it’s an easy proposition when it’s time to do their taxes? I think most people in the industry know that agents, when they lose that referral or repeat business, most of the time it’s due to them losing track of their clients or not having a reason to reach out—so a lot of our tools are value-driven. This provides a pipeline to communicate with clients through, adding value on the other side of the transaction, after the sale has closed.
We’re also working to integrate meaningful artificial intelligence into the mix to assist our agents within their day-to-day routine. In fact, we’re currently working on building out a CMA tool for our office that’s AI-based. And while it’s not designed to replace what an agent does, it will help cut out about 40 minutes of the preliminary work associated with gathering data so that agents can still make adjustments and come up with a good number
What sets JPAR® – Modern Real Estate apart from the competition?
I think it’s a couple different things, beginning with the fact that our agents aren’t afraid of support—meaning they aren’t afraid to ask questions. So when they’re out there in the field, they know they can contact us any time, and they won’t have to wait days for an answer. The other thing that sets us apart from the competition centers around us being a tech-heavy brokerage. The value that we’re able to bring to our clients is going to exceed most other brokerages’ value based on the basic things we offer—a lot of automation, a lot more marketing and more options for different systems that can assist clients on a lot of different levels.
For more information, please visit https://www.jpar.com.
