Stephen C. Roney is President and Chief Executive Officer of First American Residential Group, Inc., which is a wholly owned subsidiary of The First American Corporation, a FORTUNE 500 Company and the nation’s leading provider of business information. First American Residential Group provides service, technology, outsourcing and product solutions to the real estate and relocation industries.
As President and Chief Executive Officer, Roney oversees the group’s delivery of First American products and services that meet the needs of regional and national real estate brokerages, franchises and others. Roney also has responsibility for First American’s Relocation Advantage, the nation’s largest provider of closing management services to relocation companies and MarketLinx, a 2003 First American acquisition and the nation’s leading provider of MLS services.
Roney began his career in 1973 within Transamerica Corporation’s corporate relocation subsidiary, where he gained extensive industry experience in operations, sales and management. In 1985, he accepted a position as Executive Vice President with Coldwell Banker Relocation Services, Inc., and was named President and Chief Executive Officer in 1989. In that capacity, Roney worked closely with sister companies in the mortgage, real estate brokerage, title, escrow and insurance industries, and was elected to the board of directors of Coldwell Banker Real Estate Group in 1990. In 1993, Roney was one of five senior executives at the company partnering with San Francisco-based Fremont Group in the acquisition of Coldwell Banker from Sears, Roebuck and Company. In 1997, following Coldwell Banker’s acquisition by what is now Cendant Corporation, Roney shifted to an advisory capacity and began providing executive consulting services to the company.
An acknowledged industry leader, Roney has been widely quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Fortune and Forbes. During his tenure at Coldwell Banker, his firm was the recipient of numerous quality awards and was featured in the business best seller, “Best Practices: Building Your Business with Customer-Focused Solutions.”
Roney is a graduate of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He served six years on the Dean’s Advisory Board at the University of California, Irvine’s Graduate School of Management where he was also a guest lecturer. Roney currently lives in Newport Beach, Calif. He and his wife of 32 years, Karen, are parents of three sons.
I don’t know if I’d consider myself to be a visionary or not – everyone’s got their view of what’s happening the industry…but since you’re asking….
I really see four or five major changes occurring in the real estate industry right now. Consolidation of business; increasing reliance on the Internet for service deliveries; strong pricing pressure from buyers and sellers to reduce costs and increase services – really questioning the value proposition; area business models to deliver products and services; and the desire for “one-stop” shopping for buyers, sellers and borrowers.
There are a lot of major corporate players – and of course First American is one of them – that are having an impact in the industry. But really, there are too many to mention.
Thought and strategy leadership probably rests in 25 or 30 people in the industry. If I forget to mention one of the key players – I’ll wind up in the dog house…I think they know who they are out there.
Seriously, the industry leaders are influenced in a significant way by practitioners in the business as well as buyers, sellers and borrowers. At the end of the day, I think the customer is really the trendsetter.
Better, faster and cheaper…to utilize an overused expression. Consumers today want it online, and they want it now. Even though that lends itself to a do-it-yourself solution, there is a countertrend also - “outsourcing” to experts so that the consumer doesn’t have to waste time. So in other words, consumers want it online, but they are also saying that they don’t want to spend much time on it. So if time is at a premium – which it seems to be for everyone now-a-days - they want someone else to do it and do it efficiently. I really think the mentality of the consumer is “While I want to be deeply involved, I want someone else to do it.” This creates a dichotomy which is hard to translate to business strategy. I think the answer to this is extremely well designed and fully integrated products and services--- such as the whole notion of one-stop shopping.
They ought to buy First American products, technology and services! Seriously, they should be looking for solutions and for solution providers that not only “get it,” but are investing in the solutions and as such will continue to work toward a more fully integrated solution that can integrate with other systems as desired by the customer.
Staying close to the customer is clearly number one – this is the way that it was, is, and will always be. That being said, many companies are in the process of fully embracing their own vision of one-stop shopping, which I think is quite consistent with consumer sentiments.
An obvious one would be to continue to look for higher-value, lower cost solutions in keeping with consumer service and cost pressures. I also think continuing to emphasize the value and importance of working with professionals is an important part of the equation.
We are investing heavily in assembling full solution sets for each of our various customer channels whether they be broker, agent, MLS, lender, or title agent. Integration of these services, products and technologies will be the key to success.
I think we need to worry less about our competitors and more about staying close to our customers. I think the winners will do that - continue to stay close to the customer - and they’ll fight commoditization like crazy by constantly increasing their value propositions.
