Today’s RealTrending features an exclusive interview with Adam Hergenrother, CEO of Adam Hergenrother Companies and founder of Livian in partnership with Keller Williams Realty. Adam talks about the blurring of lines between brokerages and teams, the race to become the “Amazon” of real estate and how lead generation is evolving.
Tracey Velt: This interview comes at a good time. We just released the RealTrends 2021 Team Profitability Study. It’s funny because I’ve had a lot of people contact me and say, “it used to be clear cut, the team, the brokerage, and now it’s very confusing.” And the teams in our study had a gross margin of 61.8% compared to an average of 13.8% for real estate brokerage firms. The reason is that teams really focus on the leads, whereas a brokerage focuses on developing the agent, but you’re on your own to get the leads. Your platform, Livian, offers lead generation for agents as a way for these teams to expand. Tell me how they differ from other teams and the lead generation that you’re offering.
Adam Hergenrother: Yeah. Also, I’ll make a comment too, a little bit about that, about just the brokerage and teams, the blurring of those lines. I think for a long period of time, I think that brokerages held the ground because of what they had for information. And then I think a lot of brokerages and any affiliation became complacent, if you will. Because remember, when I got into real estate in 2006, the largest team I think was $50 or $60, $70 million. Now people throw that around like it is candy at a birthday party, right? It’s not a big number anymore necessarily.
What’s happened is that teams have gotten so big, they realize that brokerages can’t really support them— they haven’t changed enough to support the team. They’ve grown so large that they started to alienate themselves from brokerages. And I own three brokerages and a large team, so I can see it from all different sides. And so a couple of things that you have to really look for is what does this look like in a couple years? I believe that Livian is born from this intersection between taking the best of what brokerages are doing and what teams are doing and bringing it to a consumer platform along with an agent-centric platform — meeting at that intersection. What does that mean? It means that brokerages have to provide a different level of value to the agent than they’re used to providing.
RealTrending features the brightest minds in real estate. Twice a month, brokerage leaders, top agents, team leaders, and industry experts share their success secrets, trends, and lessons learned navigating this ever-changing industry. Hosted by Tracey Velt and produced by Elissa Branch.
