Ann King
President, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Florida Network Realty
St. Augustine, Florida
https://www.floridanetworkrealty.com
Region served: Northeast Florida
Years in real estate: 20
Number of offices: 9
Number of agents: 500
Favorite part of your job: Helping an agent set their goals, then watching them achieve.
Motto/work philosophy that you live by: Do what you say. Don’t set unrealistic expectations and fail to achieve them.
What attracted you to the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices network?
The technology and the culture. Linda (Sherrer) started this company 35 years ago, and her all-in, positive and supportive management style is energizing. We embrace collaboration and technology, and use it to better our business and the client experience. The collaboration among agents, employees and managers is extraordinary, and it is a benefit to everyone in the offices or out in the field. Our culture of collaboration has become the cornerstone of the company culture. Not too many companies work the way Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Florida Network Realty does. You can buy marketshare, but you can’t buy culture.
What is one of the challenges your market faces, and what are you doing to overcome it?
Low inventory and fluctuating interest rates continue to be a challenge in our market. As interest rates increase—and the average sales price has risen by double digits—the lower affordability has caused frustration with the buyer pool, and has priced them out of the market. So, how are we overcoming this? There’s a saying: Marry the home, but date the rate. We are educators for our buyers and sellers to keep them informed, and we negotiate terms to meet their needs. For instance, instead of a seller doing a price reduction, they may consider an offer to buy down a buyer’s rate, or to pay a percentage toward a buyer’s closing cost. Many times, this is less expensive for sellers, and helps affordability for buyers.
Describe the current consumer-confidence climate in your area.
The real estate market is cyclical, and homeownership is known to be a long-term investment with great potential for generational wealth. Despite this, the overall consumer-confidence climate in Northeast Florida is cautious. As always, people need to move for life changes, work and family reasons. The buyer doesn’t want to overpay, and the seller doesn’t want to sell too low. Combine that with lower inventory and fluctuating interest rates, and agents need to be the navigators through this process in order to increase confidence.
Is now the time to pursue expansion—in terms of offices and/or number of agents?
We always want to grow, but we want to grow right. Our current footprint covers six counties across Northeast Florida, and we’re always adding talented agents in these areas. If the right opportunity presents itself, we’re ready to expand.
How do you use technology to better serve your agents and clients?
Our company and our business are based on relationships, and the technology we use is not there to replace our relationships, but to make them consistent and to add value to the agent and the client. We feel that the client experience is critical in every technology we consider: how is this going to help and streamline the client experience? We have also added many new technologies in the last year to help agents nurture their database, which is the lifeline of their business, while handling the daily activities of success in real estate.
For more information, please visit https://www.berkshirehathawayhs.com.
