Real estate agency

This Company Is Now Chattanooga’s First Billion-Dollar Real Estate Agency

Nathan Brown helped make Keller Williams, the downtown North Shore office, the premier realtor office.

Leading agencies for residential sales 2015

1 Keller Williams downtown office, $515.2 million in sales

2 Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Realty Center, $410 million in sales

3 Crye-Leike real estate agents, $324.6 million in sales

4 Keller Williams Realty in East Brainerd, $290.1 ​​million in sales

5 Re/Max Renaissance real estate agents, $172.5 million

6 Re/Max properties, $140.8 million in sales

7 Chattanooga LLC real estate partners, $129.6 million in sales

8 Keller Williams in Cleveland, Tennessee, $97.2 million in sales

9 Keller Williams to Hixson, $86.1 million in sales

10 Coldwell Pryor Realty, $68.8 million in sales

Source: Multiple Listing Service, Greater Chattanooga Association of Realtors

Propelled by a banner year for home sales in Chattanooga, Keller Williams Realty became the first Scenic City real estate brand to top $1 billion in residential and commercial property sales in 2015.

One of Keller Williams’ five Chattanooga offices – the downtown North Shore office that opened less than a decade ago – also set a record last year by becoming the first real estate office in Chattanooga to handle more $500 million in single-family home sales. .

Team leader Nathan Brown, hired last year to run Keller Williams’ downtown office, hopes to do even better this year with more agents and more sales. The 33-year-old real estate agent, who began his real estate career in Cleveland, Tenn., when he was 19, attributes the franchise’s growth in Chattanooga to the increasing number of teams and groups under the Keller Williams banner and the philosophy of sharing. more information, contacts and training among agents.

“Keller Williams’ philosophy is that together we achieve more, so that our agents, even our most experienced and successful agents, continually help other agents grow their business,” Brown said.

Chattanooga realtors of all types benefited last year from historically low mortgage interest rates and an improving economy, which helped reverse the housing downturn during the Great Recession. In 2015, real estate agents increased the number of single-family homes sold in Chattanooga to a record high of 8,717.

Home sales last year were up 11.4% from a year earlier in the Chattanooga area, even as the median selling price of homes sold locally rose 7% to $152,000 for the typical house.

A growing share of these sales come from real estate teams or groups that use multiple real estate agents and support staff to promote and support a real estate team.

Most major real estate brands now have such teams, which have grown much faster than solo real estate agents in most markets.

Seven of the top 10 real estate agents who sold the most homes in Chattanooga in 2015 were part of groups at Keller Williams’ offices, including teams led by Charlotte Mabry, Mark Hite, Jay Robinson, Wendy Dixon, Barry Evans, Cindi Richardson and Jim Lea, according to multiple listing sales data for 2015. Two other top 10 sales teams were affiliated with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Realty Center – Grace Edington and Linda Brock – while ERA Blue Key’s Aaron Shipley Properties was the other team of real estate agents in the top selling groups last year.

The large number of Keller Williams Group sales teams, which make up 48% of all Keller Williams downtown office agents, reflects the sales vision described by Keller Williams founder Gary Keller in his book “The Millionaire Real Estate Agent”, which describes a journey from a solo agent to a team of agents.

“Success requires a single focus,” Keller said. “You have to do less stuff for more effect instead of doing more stuff with side effects.”

Real estate sales teams allow individuals to specialize in what they do best within a group, whether it’s developing leads, pursuing sales, analyzing and preparing properties to sell or to manage the paperwork on the transactions.

“Part of the cornerstone of our growth is leveraging the skills and breadth of what an agent can do individually by building teams,” Brown said.

Brown previously ran Keller Williams’ office in Portland, Oregon, where he helped increase the number of agents in that office from 160 to 205 in three years. In her new job, Brown has even bigger goals.

Keller Williams’ downtown office had 209 officers at the end of 2015, down from 92 officers in 2012. Brown wants to grow the office to more than 287 officers by the end of 2016.

Brown said he sees himself as an example of the success possible for ambitious young workers able to capitalize on the improving real estate market.

Brown, who grew up in Cleveland and dropped out of college to focus on real estate sales, worked at Coldwell Banker in Cleveland when he decided to join Keller Williams at age 25. Brown became a team leader in 2008 and now works with productivity and training managers in Chattanooga to help develop the skills of new and experienced agents.

In a way, Keller Williams operates like a small start-up business for real estate agents, Brown said. The company was recently ranked by Entrepreneur magazine as the #1 real estate franchise. Keller Williams’ use of technology and training to coach agents has also resulted in the agency being recognized by the magazine Training last year as the #1 training organization.

Mark Hite, one of Chattanooga’s top-selling real estate agents who helped establish Keller Williams’ downtown office in June 2007, said he was drawn to Keller Williams by the training and development he the company offers to its agents.

“When I came to Keller Williams I had just one assistant. Today our team is 15 employees and three contractors,” said Hite, who set up his own call center for his team to to generate more real estate prospects.

Hite said he doesn’t see Keller Williams’ other agents as competitors, but as prospects and contacts for even more business.

“Our company culture is very different because we have a culture of sharing,” said Hite, whose office is just 20 feet from Chattanooga’s No. 1 real estate agent last year, Charlotte Mabry. “If I share what I do with other people in the company and they learn and improve, we all do better, and the office as a whole does better.”

Mabry said the downtown office is made up of a mix of single agents who work alone as well as teams of people who work together for their clients.

“Our productivity per person is nearly double that of normal agent stats,” she said. “All of our agents share best business practices, and we have many long-serving agents who teach classes and help train our new agents.”

The office handles residential and commercial real estate sales and is home to one of Keller Williams’ top luxury agents in the South, Jay Robinson. Robinson, Founder and Owner of Team Robinson of Keller Williams Realty Downtown Chattanooga, was recognized this year in New Orleans as the Southeast’s Best Agent for Sales of Residential Properties Priced Over $500,000 $.

“The bottom line for us is that we really like selling Chattanooga — at any price range,” Robinson said. “This city is special, and being part of its success is the absolute greatest honor for me and my team.”

Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfree press.com or 423-757-6340.


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