Jim Pitts
Qualifying Broker | CEO
Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New Mexico Properties, Santa Fe Real Estate, Taos Real Estate, Angel Fire Real Estate
Albuquerque, New Mexico
https://www.bhhsnmproperties.com
Region served: The state of New Mexico
Years in real estate: 37
Number of offices: 7
Number of agents: 260
Favorite part of your job: Working and interacting with brokers
How are you positioning your agents to stay ahead of the waves of normalization and renewed activity that are continuing to ripple through the housing market?
By focusing on how we’re dealing with the market shift—talking about price reductions, what our strategies are and how we’re working with sellers. We’re in a shifting market, so we need to shift. Whatever we’ve done in the past is great, but let’s look for new opportunities to do things.
Another thing we’re doing is utilizing our local connections to create business, conducting homeownership presentations for first responder academy classes, which has been very positive for us.
We’re also focusing on MLS numbers and the trends in both the MLS overall and local markets specifically so that our brokers are armed with better information that’s specific to that house and location versus global numbers. While the MLS may be up 5% in pending sales and 1% in closings over last year, when you break down the local markets, some of them are down and some of them are up.
In what ways is your brokerage using technology, including AI, to help your agents succeed?
One of the things I think we’ve done a good job with is increasing the adoption rate in our backend technology programs from 20% to 40% through one-on-one training and masterminds.
In addition to a library with 16 different prompts already built into our backend system for agents to use, we’re also working toward getting agents onboard with a paid version of ChatGPT. And we’ve already implemented a texting platform to communicate with our agents instead of using email.
We’ve also been working with our brokers on upping their game with video. People often shy away from video, so we’ve been trying to show them how easy it is to use across social media and other promotions.
When coaching, training and mentoring agents, what is your most common piece of advice?
Right now it’s mindset—to ignore the noise that’s in the market and focus on your business. It doesn’t matter what somebody else is doing. Instead, focus on what you’re going to do. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses?
We’ve spent a lot of time this year helping agents focus on their business. When we work with agents one-on-one, it’s really specific to their mindset, because they’re all different—and they all interpret the market differently.
We work with them on keeping a positive attitude while working within their business plan, focusing on accomplishing the small things that will ultimately lead to the big things.
What attracted you to the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices network?
Berkshire Hathaway has given us a quality name. There’s a lot of consumer trust in the brand name, so people we’ve never worked with come to us because they’re invested with Berkshire Hathaway—or they have some connection with Berkshire Hathaway—and so they want us to represent them in a real estate transaction.
Being part of the network has also helped us expand our presence worldwide. The direction of the senior management has been good, and there’s a great collection of owners that we’re able to collaborate with. The ownership groups are so supportive, and we get to communicate a lot.
For more information, please visit https://www.BerkshireHathawayhs.com.
