Stephen H. Murray is the editor of REAL Trends and Lore Magazine, the industry's leading publication focused on the leaders of the industry and president of Murray Consulting, Inc. Murray has over 28 years experience in the residential real estate field. For the past 18 years as editor of REAL Trends, Murray has played a significant role in developing the REAL Trends 500, ranking the nation’s largest residential real estate firms and the REAL Trends Gathering of Eagles.
In addition, REAL Trends formed the REAL Trends Institute, a program that educates rising leaders as to the methods of planning and directing leading realty service firms. Murray also manages the activities of four CEO groups, The Vision Group, The Leadership Council, the New Home Marketing Group of America and The Brokers' Council. Through REAL Trends, Murray has played a significant role in several national studies, including “Room for Improvement” (2002); Perspectives on Financial Institutions in the Realty Business” (2003); “One-Stop-Shopping”(2003) with RESPRO® and the Realty Alliance; and authored a study on the future, “From Homogeneity to Segmentation” (2004) for the National Association of REALTORS®. Murray Consulting is the leading management consultancy in the residential real estate industry with over 1,700 client assignments since 1987. It is recognized as the leader in merger advisory and valuations in the residential realty services field.
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The industry is heading for a classic segmented market where there are large lower cost packaged suppliers and many smaller niche oriented firms competing in the business. There will be high end, online, discount, flat fee and a variety of others competing with differing offers for the consumer.
This change will fundamentally change the way professionals work and interact with each other and place enormous pressures on the local associations who will struggle to accommodate these different kinds of firms.
Major corporate players are not influencing the change as of this time. There are really only four, Cendant, HomeServices, Prudential and GMAC who are large “corporate players”. The remainder are privately owned fairly entrepreneurial firms. Their interests are not alike in many regards.
The changes they will affect are the drive to integrate the home purchase and home sale process. Their goals will be alike here where they are drivers to integrate the process and simplify it. Along with most regional players this is their major strategy at this time.
Along with the four mentioned above we watch all of the national firms including RE/MAX, Keller Williams, Exit Realty and Realty Executives. Among others we monitor carefully are Realestate.com, ZipRealty, HelpUSell and Assist2Sell. These last four are especially interesting as their growth rates are stronger than even the major existing national players measured on a percentage basis.
Individuals we watch are people like Larry Flick at Prudential Fox & Roach, Tom Reddin at Realestate.com, Rick O’Neil at HelpUSell, and Ian Morris at HouseValues. There are others.
More simplification, transparency and in some cases lower costs. More personal involvement and control over the transaction of buying and selling homes.
Move to simplify the real estate transaction and make it easier to do business with the real estate professional. The local association needs to scrap their drive to be “everything to everybody” and focus on how to strengthen the real estate marketplace. This will be the hardest thing for local associations as too many have been led far away from their core mission.
Institute formal planning and accountability throughout the organization. Just as importantly brokerage firms will have to learn to say “no”; no to sales associates who don’t fit the company’s culture; no to consumers who aren’t the kind of customer the firm is trying to serve and no to opportunities that don’t fit their vision and business plan.
None. The role of the association is not to help brokerage firms be profitable. Their role should be as the trusted non-partisan market maker for all real estate firms regardless of their model, the price they charge or the services they offer.
We try to publish the facts that are in front of us. Through research that is unbiased we have attempted to produce reports such as the Top Performing Brokerage Report, the REAL Trends 500, the Murray/Harris Interactive Consumer studies and several others we try to deliver reliable information about the performance of realty firms and what consumers truly want from real estate professionals.
Most business books are reconstituted from past books with similar messages. Saying the same old thing with a new cover. And while I read dozens of books a month, there are only a few that are meaningful.
Pay attention to the ultimate consumer, the buyer and seller of homes. If the leaders of our industry should focus on anything it is what has happened in virtually every service or industrial business for the last 100 years. That is, those who focus their efforts to serve the needs of consumers will succeed more than those who don’t. Those who do it best really succeed and those who do it poorly become part of history.
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