Claudia Stallings
Chief Operating Officer
Wallace Real Estate, a member of Leading Real Estate Companies of the World®
Knoxville, Tennessee
Region served: East Tennessee
Years in real estate: 19
Number of offices: 7
Number of agents: 475
What is one of the challenges your market faces, and what are you doing to overcome it?
We still have naturally high demand, but we’re seeing interest rates slow the activity. One way we’ve been able to combat this is by having relationships with mortgage lenders who offer special programs.
We also want to ensure that we’re empowering agents through training. We speak directly about what we’re seeing in the market so that our consumers can make the best educated decision. We’re talking about what the market has done over this period of time, how it compares to last year and why we think this is occurring—and we send that information out to our agents frequently.
How does your company make its agents’ jobs easier?
Our agents are professionals when it comes to working with consumers, and we believe that it’s the company’s role to support them with administrative and marketing assistance, therefore, we’re very high touch. We see a lot of consumers out there who have been promised marketing, services, etc., and then they didn’t get that because it was 100% on the REALTOR® to accomplish that. We do a really good job of making our agents’ lives easier by saying, “all you have to do is scan the paperwork, and we’ll take it from there.”
In what ways do you see the agent and brokerage climate evolving?
While I think we may see fewer brand-new agents entering the market, the brokerages that offer support systems will become more attractive. I foresee us growing because as the market shifts—and we’re still in a seller’s market here—those agents are going to be required to do more marketing and provide more updates to sellers. Instead of selling in three hours, we’re selling in three weeks, and that seller is going to expect more from their agent. What we’ll see from this is a sort of agent migration, where agents are going to say, “You know what? The market has changed. Buyers aren’t falling out of trees anymore. I need to go where I can get some support.” I think we’ll see expansion of the brokerages that offer more tools and services.
Tell us what it means to be part of Leading Real Estate Companies of the World®.
We’re taking advantage of a lot of their educational materials, and that’s super exciting for us. Coming from a franchise model, we were provided with a lot of education, but to hear it now from so many varied perspectives is really refreshing. I love having the ability to pick up the phone and call people across the country and say, “Let’s share best practices” and improve our agents’ learning capacity by hearing from people who may have an idea we’ve just not thought of here locally.
As we head into 2024, what are you most looking forward to?
Our company made a really big change recently, transitioning from a franchise to an independent. I’m really looking forward to growing into the company we have in our sights. I’m excited to define who we want to be and what we can become. Marketwise, one of the things I’m looking forward to is an interest rate reduction. The need for housing isn’t going away. We just have to figure out how to make that available, to navigate the amount of housing we need to meet demand. RE
For more information, please visit https://www.leadingre.com.
