The Challenges of Owning a Real Estate Brokerage over my past 20 years

The Real Estate market has changed in the past 22 years since I began ... in so many ways.... back when I was first licensed in IDAHO & WASHINGTON, we were not even required to have continuing education, E & O Insurance was not a requirement and most of us did not have it ... commissions were pretty much 6% on every listing you got...no questions asked ... We did not have FAX machines, no one had computers in our market place and none of us knew of the INTERNET, had eMail addresses or Blogging???? What is that? ... We did have the Multiple Listing Service, but our listings were manually put into our MLS binder.  Every year things changed. New things (tools) came around to make our job a little easier ... education became a requirement.  Yeah!

Early in my career, almost 20 years ago ... after attending my first Idaho/Montana Convention in Montana! I attended all seminars and education I could ... I learned things, and I came back to my home, my Real Estate market, and I applied what I learned.  I had a dream!  You see ... that year in Montana ... I was first introduced to a Company, I fell in love with ... I wanted to be a part of ... and it was red, white & blue ... so when I got back from Convention, I called them to go to work for them; "Come to my town!" I said, "I want to work for you!"  "But that is not how it worked" ~ they told me; I could open up a company ... they sent a franchise salesman to talk to me ...  I was only 1 1/2 years selling Real Estate ... I worked at an Independent Company then, I decided I needed to join a franchise ... so I joined the Gold Coats ... I only worked there for approximately 13 months ... while obtaining the designations and brokers licenses .... Within just over one 1/2 years from that convention, I had my GRI & my CRS designations and I finished both my WASHINGTON BROKERS & IDAHO BROKERS requirements and was an Associate Broker in the states of Idaho & Washington ... I excelled in that 13 months becoming a Centurion Agent ... helping make that office become an Centurion Office ... The classes I took were not offered 'on line' (remember we had not heard of the Internet ) nor were the classes offered locally, I had to travel to Spokane, Boise, Tacoma to get this education...All at MY OWN cost ... sacrificing my time with my family to get this education ... but I had that DREAM ... and on May 22 1995  I opened that office ... in the small market I lived in ... we struggled, we scratched, we excelled, we grew, we lost ... and so many things changed ... especially the COST to do business... the only thing that hadn't changed too much is the commission rate ...still holding in at that time at 5 % to 6% ... Over the next 14 years We had good times, we had bad times, we laughed, we cried...Realtors came & Realtors have gone ... but I kept running with the Dream ... and I had a passion ... I loved selling Real Estate, I loved helping people!

I watched others, I observed the Best, I always attended conventions... but I could not make the profits I had hoped ... I realized I would make more, just being a Realtor like those that worked for me, with me ... so 3 years ago I decided to sell my company ... I found what I thought would be a good buyer ... sold it to him. He had been buying up offices throughout Idaho, opening up top notch offices, top of the line equipment, making promises ... within 1 month of selling it I started feeling I might of made the wrong decision...especially when that first commission check I had ever officially got from this New Owner/buyer of my old company, BOUNCED ... but I was given a good excuse, even having a bank Representative call me to tell me it was a Bank error, that is how persuasive this new Owner/Buyer was ... I held on to the false promises for 11 months, and the new Owner/Buyer, had not made lease payments to me on the building he was renting from me, ( it is a pretty high rent district building! ) I made big mistakes by letting it go on too long,(11 months) all of a sudden I realized the ship was sinking ... the Balloon had popped...air was deflating ... then the Hostile departure happened... (and that is another story)

It just so happened there was a New Buyer that came in the picture, to float the ship ... again ... but so many things had changed ... is all I wanted to do was pick up the pieces, try to make some sense of the past few years; of my decision to sell and just be a Realtor, not an owner.   I of course was OUT ...  the first buyer filed Bankruptcy .... I was never compensated for the lost rents nor the lost Money from the Original sale of the business.  But I must keep going....  Then it turns out things did not work between this 2^ndnew owner and ME, He just did not do Business the way I liked to do business...he did rent the building from us for about 5 1/2 months, They bought in a new location, the day Buyer #2 moved the office to the new location... they sent me my eMail ... they left the building and there I was ... 

AND to think ... is all I wanted to do was work for this company!  ...  so I went to work for another one of them in another town, with the Internet and the technology I was able to do that ... but it seems everything I did, I was told I couldn't do ... so after 6 more months of selling for them and an empty building that I had virtually lost 15 months of High rents from we decided we needed to Open another Company;  My husband & business partner & I thought of a few names, we called a few franchisees to check into them, but nothing clicked. Until that beautiful 20th day of September, we were out doing a Real Estate errand and I said "Cameron! what do you think of the name Rock-n-Roll Realty?"  We both looked at each other and came straight home and started working on it ... so here we are almost exactly 1 year after we became Rock-n-Roll Realty! ...  so I went to work for another one of them in another town, with the Internet and the technology I was able to do that ... but it seems everything I did, I was told I couldn't do ... so after 6 more months of selling for them and an empty building that I had virtually lost 15 months of High rents from we decided we needed to Open another Company;  My husband & business partner & I thought of a few names, we called a few franchisees to check into them, but nothing clicked. Until that beautiful 20th day of September, we were out doing a Real Estate errand and I said "Cameron! what do you think of the name Rock-n-Roll Realty?"  We both looked at each other and came straight home and started working on it ... so here we are almost exactly 1 year after we became Rock-n-Roll Realty! 

Actually changing all of my Real Estate Licenses from something I had been since May 22, 1995 ... where we grow from here ... we see in the future ... was very exciting! Becoming Rock-n-Roll Realty on October 1, 2007 OFFICIALLY...  Cameron getting his 1^st Real Estate License in the State of Washington on October 5^th 2007 and then getting his Idaho License in May of 2008 ... Along with the help of my Brother Ray, who helped us design our LOGO and together the THREE of us worked furiously to remodel the OLD office to a First Class place! By Nov 5^th2007 we opened the doors and have been there almost every day since!  ( Déjà Vu ... it feels almost like 16 years ago ) ... WE are working long hours setting up the office just right ... So here we are ... finally getting things set up.  WE are READY to Rock-n-Roll!   We have huge plans for our company and we know they are going to happen!  We have fixed up the office first class and we are having more FUN with the NAME & the people!   We are locally owned a proudly independent! Our slogan is "if you're Ready to Rock, we're Ready to Roll"

And NOW we are ready to RECRUIT! We are gonna shake this town up and get us a team of Realtors that love the idea as much as we do! And then we are Movin' on to sell Franchises! The response to our name has been extraordinary from young and old alike! We went to show a house, listed by our competitor, a franchise, a few months ago and the seller was from California and she ranted and raved and ran to her car to take pictures of our rig... she loved the name .. she loved the idea ... and she told her friends!

While planning our new company and brainstorming about what will work in this ever changing Real Estate World, we realized with the POWER of the internet we would be able to survive......We now offer the bundling of services ... we give people what they want and they tell their friends ... Cameron & I are so busy ... I have never been happier... With our listing plan we are getting our share of the market and now that we are recruiting we have some Realtors that are ready to set us on fire ... the fire we need to grow! In fact just recently the other I went to work for, the short time before opening Rock-n-Roll Realty, has joined Rock-n-Roll Realty;  because he can see the future too!   That just happened the 22^nd of September ... we sent in the license change forms!  

And that day something else happened that same day in Septmeber ... the 2^nd buyer of my OLD company announced he was shutting his entire office down to try to restructure .... since they had owned the company in the past 18 months ... things had changed (as they always do), Realtors came & Realtors had gone ... management was bad ... more Realtors left ... even those brand new offices would not keep the Realtors; the management was bad ... so now it seems that company I dreamed of 18 years ago ... is just a memory ... and we all know ~ Rock-n-Roll is Here to stay! Rock-n-Roll Realty!