Gary Keller serves as chairman of the board of Keller Williams ® Realty, Inc. He is responsible for providing strategic direction for all of Keller Williams Realty. Keller established the company with partner Joe Williams in 1983. In 1991 Keller Williams began franchising and expanded to
Based on his leadership qualities and contributions to the real estate industry, Keller was voted as one of the five "Most Admired People” in a survey conducted by REAL TrendsTM magazine in 2000. He has also been named one of the Most Influential People in Real Estate by REALTOR® Magazine and Inman News. Keller's success as a business owner was acknowledged in 2002 and 2003 when the gross profit of his two Austin offices earned him a place in REAL Trends elite 100-member Billionaire Club. In 2004, Keller was a finalist for Inc. Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year award.
Keller first became a best-selling author in 2003, with his self-published book, The Millionaire Real Estate Agent. The book was picked up by McGraw-Hill in 2003 and became a mainstay on BusinessWeek’s paperback best-seller list, rising to number 8 and selling over 100,000 copies.
Keller released his second book, The Millionaire Real Estate Investor, in March 2005, and the book recently made the New York Times business book best seller list.
Keller is married to Mary Pfluger and they have one child, John Christian. He enjoys playing guitar, reading, movies, sports and spending as much time as possible with his family and friends.
Click to email Gary
The biggest issue we face today is the re-evolution of our “co-copetition” relationship in our industry. In the name of free enterprise and competition our industry faces some interesting times ahead.
One of the biggest changes for agents is of course the internet. More and more consumers are starting their home search and their agent search on the Web, so it is having a large impact on how real estate agents lead generate and service their clients. And the view that free access to this data is an absolute gets to the core of what “co-opetition” means in our industry.
The second issue is the emergence of discount brokerages.
Third is that the economy remains strong and moving forward and that the residential real estate industry has been riding that wave – this is a change from past eras where the market was characterized by more extreme highs and lows. The current length of recovery has allowed business models that were unsustainable in the past to now give the illusion that they are sustainable.
Fourth is the renewed commitment by all parties to help make one-stop shopping a workable reality. Although the concept and it’s viability have been proven by many, it is only now that all vendors and real estate companies are getting on the same page.
And finally, perhaps the most important trend is the real estate agent emerging as a true business person, and becoming a business owner versus a salesperson.
Due to the fact that most consumers are starting their home search and agent search on the internet, of course many of the “dot com” businesses are making waves in the industry. ZipRealty is one of the companies who started out claiming the internet would provide economies of scale and years later is still trying to prove it.
Discounters like Foxtons are also getting a fair amount of press. What they are trying to do is interesting because they claim to offer full-service real estate agents at discounted commission rates. They are aiming for the low-margin, high-volume business model. The idea that they can aggregate enough business to make this model work is still completely unproven.
You also have companies like HomeGain and LendingTree, who have created the idea that they can do a better job than the actual consumer at picking a real estate agent for them. However, the “matching” services that they offer cannot prove that they are actually finding the best match for the consumer and the idea that the consumer is also saving money in this process is more of a marketing strategy than a “at the end of the transaction” provable fact.
Homestore and NAR are also major drivers of change. Their opportunity to make the right or wrong decisions is unparalleled. They must use their role to continue to build REALTOR.com into the player the real estate agent needs them to be. Today – it is questionable whether they truly understand what they need to do for the good of the agent. Companies like Ebay, Google and Yahoo! continue to eye our industry from the outside looking in, and lick their lips at the idea of what piece they can get and what they can earn for it.
And finally, you have companies entering the market that are trying to do what Keller Williams Realty has been doing for years – share company money with agents. In this case, I think it would be fair to say that Keller Williams is a catalyst for change in the industry. Other companies are starting to realize that sharing the money that comes in with their agents can help them in the long run. We have been profit-sharing since the late 80’s and we know it works. Companies like Avalar and Exit are preaching revenue sharing, but we think our profit-sharing model is the most sound for business building tool on all fronts.
The same as they have always been. I don’t think that the expectations of the real estate consumer have changed. Buyers still want to find their dream home in the shortest amount of time, for the least cost and with the least hassle. Sellers still want to sell their homes in the least amount of time, for the most amount of money and the least amount of hassle.
Consumers will always have these same expectations, it’s up to those of us in the industry to find the right answers, not the other way around. Their desires stay the same – the industry looks for new ways to meet these desires. For example, many people in the industry say that a one-stop shopping experience is what the consumer really wants. What we are really saying though is that the consumer wants to save time, money and hassle. Consumers haven’t changed – the way we are trying to meet their expectations has.
Simple – decide what your business model is and aggressively put it into practice. There are only two ways to make money in any business. You can be a high-margin, low-volume business or a low-margin, high-volume business. Do your research, choose your model, put it into practice in every aspect of your business and stick to it.
None. Again, I do not believe that this is the direct business of our associations. They are in business to support agents – not drive their profitability.
Educating real estate agents, not regulating them. I really believe that you can effect change in only one of two ways – through either education or through regulation.
When you look at the entrepreneurial nature of the real estate business, it’s easy to see that education is really the only path to affect positive change. Regulation just stifles competition and real estate agents’ drive to build their businesses.
On the other hand, teaching real estate agents to be business owners can change the industry. One of the ways that I have done that is by writing my books. When myself, Dave Jenks and Jay Papasan sat down to write The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, we really wrote it for the real estate agents out there who needed to think of their “sales” career as a business. We wanted to show agents how to be business owners – based on proven methods that we researched from millionaire agents.
After we wrote the first book, we realized that many real estate agents were passing over two key components of building their businesses. One was servicing real estate investors. Investors are buying and selling multiple homes a year – that’s quite an opportunity for an agent who can align themselves with that investor. Number two was becoming a real estate investor themselves. For all the knowledge that agents have about real estate and their local markets, many of them are missing the opportunity to become investors themselves. So, we knew we had to write our second book, The Millionaire Real Estate Investor. The book helps agents service their investor clients better and teaches them how to invest as well.
Teaching real estate agents to be business owners and showing them the path to wealth through real estate investing creates a new paradigm, a new way of thinking in the industry. But again, it’s through education.
Pay attention to your constituents. Pay attention to your membership. It’s not about you being in tune with the consumer, it’s about agents being in tune with the consumer and then sharing that direction with the associations and the MLS to provide the consumer with the best real estate experience they can find.
