"Exciting business news for my company here.  Prudential Carolina Real Estate -- the leader in the Charleston, South Carolina tri-county area by far -- is one of the top 50 (largest) real estate companies in the nation.  It is about 1100 total people, with about 1000 agents.  As with all Prudential franchises, it is independently owned and operated.  The company is, at its heart and soul, a family business with rock solid leadership and core values.
 
Effective 1 May, we are changing or name to Carolina One Real Estate and becoming a true independent, with an affiliation with "The Leading Real Estate Companies of the World" (LeadingRE).  All the company's leadership remains, and in fact they are bringing up another corporate level manager from within to bolster the company's ability to support the 16 sales offices of Carolina One spread across our area.  It is still the same good agents doing the same quality relationships-based work on behalf of their clients.
 
We are quite excited about this pending change, and it is already making quite a buzz in the business community here.  The "Big Dog" in town making a name change in the middle of what most see as a "challenging" market might seem a bit odd, but in fact the company leadership has been carefully studying whether or not to renew their Prudential franchise for about a year.  They've really launched us forward with a well developed plan.  In 2008 we have already picked up a few points of market share in the local real estate market, and the excitement this is creating, plus more of the corporate's overhead being able to get poured back into local marketing and advertising, should in all likelihood help us do even more for our clients, thereby giving the company an additional bump upward, as well.
 
The Prudential franchise relationship was good for this company for the past several years.  As the renewal time-frame with Prudential loomed, the company was apparently courted a good bit by most of the known real estate franchises (as you'd expect of one of the top 50 real estate companies in the nation).  We think the new independent status with the affiliation with LeadingRE will be even better, though.  Kind of fun being involved in this kind of very positive change to an already dynamic organization."

What will this mean to our clients? Apart from a name change and new sign-age, very little. It will be the same company with all it's values and strengths just with a larger and more powerful network behind it.