Continuing the tradition that started when the earth was young (or last year… depending on your definition of “time”), I’d like to present this year’s version of “Predictions Guaranteed to be Wrong, Or Your Money Back”! As we saw in the report card post, last year, I went 4.5 for 7 in predictions. I hope to bat lower for this year’s predictions. Of course, I can guarantee 0 for 7 by making ridiculous predictions, like “The Jets will win the SuperBowl”.
Without further ado, the predictions for 2012…
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First, watch this video. Note that it’s produced by Keller Williams Realty, Inc., the corporation that actually franchises the name. This is the official position of the franchise, not of an individual agent or an individual office or franchisee. And KW says, the brand doesn’t matter.
I wrote pretty much the same thing on a blog comment once, and was promptly threatened with dire financial consequences. The omerta is strong in the real estate industry, paisan. But when one of the largest franchises in the industry says the same thing, I’m going to assume it’s safe to tag along without having people jump down my throat simply for discussing the topic.
In any event, I assume that the KWRI people produced this as a recruiting tool, to convince real estate agents to move from wherever they be to the local KW franchise. Most consumers wouldn’t give a hoot about this sort of inside-baseball stuff. Having said that, I have a couple of questions. [Ed: Yeah, what else is new, Rob?]
Thinking about the dawn of a new day
I had promised in Part 2 of this series that I would tackle the so-called “K-Dub” model in this part. Well, I’ve decided against it. Looking at the numbers, it seems to me that from a model perspective, there’s nothing particularly novel about the K-Dub (based on Keller Williams) model. Its appeal and power lie elsewhere — power of recruiting, passive income streams, etc. — but on paper, K-Dub is clearly inferior to an optimized Traditional model and to the employee-based TerraFirma model. In the real world, of course, Keller Williams is the fastest growing real estate company in America for a reason.
Instead, I think it might be time to get into a meatier, opinion-based discussion about what the future might look like, based on the models thus far. So first, for those of you inclined to mess around with spreadsheets and such, I’m attaching the actual Excel spreadsheet I’ve been using for my analysis: Brokerage Models 2.0 (.xlsx workbook file).
Also, before we dive in, please take a moment to go read this post by Nicolai Kolding, the guy who sort of started this all with his prescient post on the status quo. Some of the comments to that post are just excellent, and this post of mine can be thought of as an extended comment to his post.
