Better Homes And Gardens Realty Jacksonville Fl

By Carole Hawkins, [email protected]

Nearly one year ago, Lifestyles Realty Web jettisoned independence to join one of the newest national brands, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate.

Today, the owners of the Jacksonville Beach realty say they could not have made a better choice.

"There's no longer a ceiling on how much income you can make," said Dan McCarthy, broker-owner. "If you really want to make a career of real estate, we've got everything here to make that happen."

Now called Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Lifestyles Realty, the company has attracted 20 new agents since the affiliation.

The average value of its individual listings has increased from $215,000 to over $300,000. The partners are looking to open offices in San Marco and Ponte Vedra.

Lifestyles and BHGRE were a good fit, McCarthy said, because the companies shared a vision of using data-centric marketing.

With Lifestyles, BHGRE was able to enter Jacksonville and expand its franchises to 52. The company has since added 14 more.

With BHGRE, the fledgling brokerage gained the resources it needed to take its game to the next level.

McCarthy became a Realtor shortly after college. He worked at large brokerages his first few years before going independent in 2007.

He did so because he believed real estate's business model needed updating.

The oldest companies from the 1960s and '70s had captured market share by putting brick-and-mortar stores on every corner.

Companies in later decades had built their businesses by adding lots of agents who were given incentives to bring in even more agents.

McCarthy thought the next generation of companies would grow by leveraging data.

He partnered with Geoff Burt, who formerly managed home lending as a senior vice president for JPMorgan Chase. Burt had flipped homes and always liked real estate. He became co-owner and general manager for Lifestyles.

The company employed some good ideas:

• Use the Internet to capture customers.

• In the down market, build a business around foreclosures and short sales – a change the more established companies were slower to make.

But, there also were challenges.

Like how to capture the business of home sellers, not just homebuyers.

Brokerages seek sellers because they are just as profitable as buyers, but less labor intensive. Finding them was tough, though.

"As long as you can rank high on a Google search, you're going to attract buyers. You're just not going to get listings," said Burt. "Maybe 80 to 90 percent of our business was buyers."

Another issue was recruiting agents.

Agents need support — customer management tools, lead generation tools, marketing support and education.

The area's "big five" brokerages have those resources in-house through their parent companies. An independent agency does not.

With BHGRE, the brokerage now has access to such tools, as well as a website for every agent.

The biggest benefit from franchising, though, has been getting access to a massive customer database, maintained by Meredith Corp.

Meredith is a marketing and media giant that owns 130 special interest publications and 20 magazine brands, including Better Homes and Gardens.

In 2007, real estate franchising company Realogy secured a 50-year license from Meredith to use the Better Homes and Gardens brand.

As part of the deal, BHGRE would get access to Meredith's customer database of 100 million people.

That data includes income and moving history information that allows BHGRE Lifestyles to do predictive marketing.

McCarthy said, "We can show (prospective clients) all the demographics, and say we're going to direct market to these consumers."

It's a strength that has moved the needle on listings for BHGRE Lifestyles.

The company grew its listings to $55 million this year, up from $13 million in 2014.

It also made the company more attractive to agents.

One had worked in real estate for eight years and never had a $1 million listing. This year, his first at BHGRE Lifestyles, he's had three.

Today, about half of BHGRE Lifestyle's business is listings.

It's been a lot of progress.

"It's night and day in terms of the value proposition that we can add to our agents and to our customers," Burt said.

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