Welcome to Brokerage Culture, where we do a deep dive and talk about the qualities and characteristics that distinguish different brokerages and set them apart from their peers. In this episode, Seattle Agent Magazine co-founder and co-publisher Anne Hartnett talks to Dean Jones, CEO of Realogics Sotheby’s International Realty. Jones leads the Pacific Northwest’s largest Sotheby’s International Realty affiliate within the global real estate network. Realogics Sotheby’s International Realty has branch offices in downtown Seattle, Bainbridge Island, Kirkland, Madison Park, Downtown Bellevue and Mercer Island.

Transcript: 

Anne Hartnett: Hi. Welcome to Seattle Agent Magazine’s Brokerage Culture feature, where we do a deep dive and talk about the qualities and characteristics that distinguish different brokerages and sets them apart from their peers.

I’m Anne Hartnett, co-founder and managing partner of Seattle Agent Magazine and Agent Publishing. I am here today with Dean Jones, CEO of Realogics Sotheby’s International Realty, which encompasses seven offices and over 325 brokers in the Puget Sound area.

And before we get started I just want to talk about the press release I received last week, Dean, that just announced you just surpassed $20 billion in sales. Kudos to you and your team.

Dean Jones: Thank you. I know, $20 billion with a B. It’s been 15 years of work and great ascension. And it’s really not just about the numbers. I think it speaks to the quality of service, the dedication of our staff and our fantastic brokers, and of course, the trust that was bestowed across thousands of transactions. We’re really honored to hit that milestone.

Anne: Well, what I really found interesting about your brokerage, and especially what’s happening in this changing landscape, is you’ve embarked on something I really haven’t seen before, and that’s engaging in strategic and retail partnerships. Can you speak to how that idea came about and how it’s enhanced the Realogics Sotheby’s brand and how it supports your brokers?

Dean: Well, certainly. I mean, it started with wanting to be in the local community and truly on the main street. In fact, we are on Main Street in Bellevue, for instance, one of our latest flagship offices. And oftentimes that required a retail store front and in some markets, like in downtown Kirkland, real estate offices were actually excluded, because they wanted to create dynamic retail environments.

But that fit very well with what our appetite was for our own brokerage operations. We wanted to create venues that were extensions of the living rooms of our agents and the clients that they served with food and beverage partnerships. And, you know, we know that real estate happens where the conversations start. So the better job that we could create, that kind of a living room environment that was open to the retail storefront, was going to attract our brokers as well as the clients that they serve.

Anne: Well, what I also find really important and beneficial, and I want to thank you for inviting me and Seattle Agent Magazine, is your scheduled events that you do with your company and most recently, your condo conundrum event. What I thought was interesting as you were digging, you know, beneath the scenes, what’s happening, you know, financially, politically, socially, in the Seattle market area.

What was even better is it went above and beyond the Realogics Sotheby’s brokers and your development team. You really wanted to have a 360 view, and you invited developers who had buildings that you didn’t represent. You had people there that were from different brokerages selling those buildings. So I thought that was really important to get a view of the market above and beyond what’s happening in your ecosphere.

Dean: Yeah, I think it goes beyond, you know, competitive relationships. This is really a collaboration and an industry that we share. And we would not be where we were today if we didn’t have that successful collaboration with our peers of industry. And we’re honored to be ranked among the top 10 largest brands ourselves at Realogics Sotheby’s International Realty with other benchmark performances.

But, you know, that was a performance of us having a difficult conversation about challenging legislation ranging from a House bill, 1110, to the Condominium Act or to the Growth Management Act. And just the nature of affordable housing in our region, which is at a critical spot in that cycle. So for us, it wasn’t just going to be my voice on this topic, it was going to include those of my peers that on one hand, you compete with collaboratively.

But, they were also content knowledge centers. And I just want to send my regards to your editorial staff and to you and for tackling a difficult conversation and, and doing it in such a great way. That’s part of what we do as leaders in our industry. 

Anne: Besides having outstanding sales numbers, what else do you attribute to your culture at your brokerage?

Dean: Inspiration, education and activation. Our brokers are benefited from hundreds of years of experience with our managing brokers and designated brokers, and our VP, both education as well as our CMO, our built in broker care system, our executive club, which is, just as it sounds, a concierge level of service to help our agents perform better out in the field and less so on some of the tasks that are burdens to them and to their performance.

We have a higher broker care per agent ratio than anywhere I’ve met in the industry, and the counterbalance to that is productivity, efficiency, confidence, problem solving and, at the end of the day, providing as much advantage to our brokers to be their best versions of themselves. And sometimes that means resolving challenges in this market. So that depth of bench for broker care and support, I think, is a direct contributor to the performance that we see that are leading those trend lines.

Anne: There’s a real estate economist that I love to quote, Mike DelPrete. He offered an interesting stat in his recent newsletter that talked about 10% of brokers have switched companies. What do you find are attracting brokers to Realogics Sotheby’s and what do you find they value and what’s important to them?

Dean: Culture, number one. I would like to say leadership and brand distinction. Those are, one, I can definitely contribute to the other one, I’m just honored to represent Sotheby’s International Realty, which was founded in 1744. I might have a little gray hair, but that was a long time before me. But it really is core advantages, Anne, that they’re looking to be a stand out, in what oftentimes feels commoditized or a sea of sameness. They don’t want to just be another leg number on the MLS. We need to offer distinct advantages to our listing and buy-side clientele. And, I think we do that, you know, distinctly, from just the greater share of voice that we have in luxury to editorial coverage, you know, listings syndication in over 80 different property websites and languages.

We are truly networked around the world, and that’s just not a buzzword. Those are personal relationships that I just feel so fortunate to have personally. and speaking to that, I believe our brand is blue and so is your passport in the United States, because I have promised to my my agents that join us that this is the last brand you’ll ever have to join, that you can literally travel on that business card and do business in the sunset of your career, and you do not have to sunset your business or your revenue in doing so.

So we have a legacy plan, which I think speaks mostly to a commitment to grow an agent through the ranks and whether they’re building a team or expanding their market share beyond their backyard into the sea, sand, snow, sun and surf destinations that we serve so proudly. So I think we’re just trying to take a bigger bite of the economic opportunity as a real estate expert, as a global real estate advisor, and, frankly, we treat it a little bit more like wealth management might. So rather than being on a transaction basis, our service goes well beyond the transaction. And you can see that in the content that we generate. And it speaks volumes to the company. And we’ve seen from the results that they create.

Anne: So as a CEO of one of the fastest growing brokerages in the Puget Sound area, how do you measure your success? 

Dean: Well, ultimately, our growth trajectory is important, which is the volume of agents. You know, market share itself does not sell real estate. The most productive brokers do. So I look to their performance, you know, year to date, we’re seeing tremendous growth. We’re maintaining our leadership in luxury amongst the top ten largest brands with the highest average selling prices. And purchasing prices on both sides of the transaction, we maintain the highest inventory levels on a per broker basis, and we actually sell more on a per broker basis compared to that peer group.

We’re doing so in consistent, if not leading, market times (in terms of) days on market. And I think this is important, which is the highest retained commission rates. So as I look at our roster of market leading real estate professionals, they are being provided with the best seat in the house in terms of representing more real estate, selling more of it in quicker times at higher values and with higher retained commission income than at our peers.

So, if there are other attributes that we should be measuring, we would certainly explore that pursuit as well. But I just am so proud of the company we keep and the clients we represent and the results that that we create together.

Anne: So tell me what’s next for Realogics Sotheby’s International Realty. 

Dean: Well we’re growing you know. We all survived the pandemic. And, there’s been some consolidation out there in our industry. I think in the tough times, we find the best versions of ourselves. I mean, I founded the brokerage in 2009. you know, 15 years ago at the depths of the Great Recession, and there’s a whole story that led up to, you know, our role here in the local industry. But I’m so glad for that because I think in the down markets, you can build market share. And, of course, in the rising tides, you can all make money and continue to grow that enterprise. But we are doubling down in new developments as we turn on the cycle. We are doubling down in our retail partnerships. We just announced two exciting ones, one with Adrian Lopez at Jocovine, our retail storefront, that you and I joined for a cocktail just last week with Quyen Dang of FogRose Atelier. We are very proudly hosting her in our retail storefronts in downtown Kirkland. She will also grace our other locations with food and beverage operations and other kinds of relationships that we are continuing to nurture.

Whether it’s with other economists like Matthew Gardner, who has been a part of our Market Maker series for a while, or wealth management relationship …  We have a number of these types of conversations in our locations, noting that they have attentive clientele that we’re also learning from. Right. But it makes us proud to be able to host those conversations in our unique venues.

And, you know, we’ll continue to grow in terms of our reach out. I don’t know that the volume of real estate offices, especially in a post-COVID world, is the answer to what our agents need to expand their own horizons. But we’re growing up and down the I-5 corridor … Kitsap County, eastern Washington. We’ve launched a farmlands and vineyard division. We have launched a mountain division up in Cle Elum. We’re exploring exurban new developments. I’m excited about that because obviously, as we go through these cycles, the inner city market has witnessed some compression and certainly a downturn in the new development markets. But we are seeing a massive interest to explore exurban locations where really the small towns are seeing a bounty of new interest, as we have some expats from King County chasing affordability or just lifestyle and a hybrid workweek, or work from home environments.

Simply put, we’re going to go to where the market is going next. And as we’ve proven over the last 15 years, we’ve done a good job at leading that direction. 

Anne: Lastly, Dean, give me three words that describe geologic Sotheby’s International Realty. 

Dean: Passionate for sure. This is a growth agent market for us. We are excited to welcome whether they’re a newer agent or one that sunsetting those that seek to grow with our unique advantages are going to find that we do so.

Culture. Culture is king. It is not something that you can acquire. It is something that is bestowed upon you by many contributing factors. And I think our choice to collaborate together to be as one, as a team, there is a lack of competition that I have felt has been present at some other companies, where we are really in it for each other.

And I just couldn’t be more, more proud about the collaboration and the culture that we keep. And, you know, I’m going to submit one that might be a little unique for the industry. I think it’s fun. You know, we want to bring back the joy. And the celebrations are there with our benchmark performance and the growth within our agents themselves.

And most importantly, the results that we create for our clients. But, you know, it’s been a lot of work. We’ve all been through so much with all the changes post-pandemic and the economy and of course, the NAR settlements and all the disruptions and dysfunctions that go on in politics. I mean, it’s a lot to unpack. And so when you play as much of a role as a psychologist with some of your clients and running your brokerage, I think we can’t lose the drive to enjoy each other and celebrate those successes.

So, yeah, fun, culture and passion are all core ingredients to the trajectory that we share at Realogics Sotheby’s International Realty.

Anne: I love it. Thank you so much for appearing on our Brokerage Culture feature, and I look forward to going to more of those events. 

Dean: Anne, you’re always receiving those tickets, and you bring the fun, the culture and the passion to our industry. Thank you for all you do with Seattle Agent Magazine and throughout your network in the United States. We are so proud to collaborate and happy to be a part of it. 

Anne: Thanks, Dean.