With over 100,000 real estate brokerage companies, and literally tens and tens of thousands of real estate brands, it's very difficult to select the best national real estate brands in the country. But in real estate, branding is the name of the game.
The reason for branding is to evoke a response from the consumer. A brand name often establishes trust and a sense of security among consumers. Their positive experience with a brand in one location will often result in that consumer using the same brand in another.
In real estate, branding is the path to recruiting new agents. Many new agents look toward brand recognition and brand awareness as factors when determining which company to associate themselves with.
After considerable research we have identified 30 real estate brands that we have decided warrant acknowledgment and have detailed them in the new 2007 Swanepoel Trends Report as brands that we feel. They are divided into the following categories:
Established National Real Estate Franchise Brands
Depending on what criteria you use, and which survey you read, the three most recognizable real estate brands are Century 21, Coldwell Banker and RE/MAX.
RE/MAX probably has the clearest, least confusing brand of the three and is less confused for another industry than the other two. Many polls put Century 21 as the most unassisted, recognizable real estate brand while Coldwell Banker, especially as a result of a huge number amount of mergers and acquisitions, has created a significant number of large, high quality offices. It has maintained more consistency in its brand than the others have.
Anyway you look at it, these three companies have the best-established brands in real estate, having invested 100 years for Coldwell Banker and 30 years for Century 21 and RE/MAX in building the value of their brand. There are of course many other strong and established real estate brands including ERA, Realty Executives, etc. But according to research the five strongest established real estate brands are:
Although franchising has by far been the single strongest catalyst in building a national brand, it has placed a damper on maintaining consistency. This is primarily the result of the fact that most franchisees are independently owned and operated, together with the strong independent contractor nature of the industry.
New National Real Estate Franchise Brands
During the last decade a larger than normal selection of new real estate franchises were created. As a result of strong promotion and growth they were able to surge to national prominence and market share.
Below table reflects the top 5 new national real estate brands that are the most exciting and/or that show the most promise.
What is interesting is that the diversity of these companies clearly reflects that there is no longer a standard for building a brand. These new companies have very diverse backgrounds: a non-US company (EXIT), a revitalized company from the 1970's (Help-U-Sell), a longtime franchise critic (Weichert), a non-industry transferred brand (Sotheby's) and a brand new real estate upstart (Avalar).
Next week I will share with you my Top 5 Regional Real Estate Brands as well as my Top 5 Online Real Estate Brands.
Best Regional Real Estate Brands
If you operate a national real estate company the necessity to build a nationally established brand follows. However, real estate is still a local business and many large regional companies have by choice decided to remain local and/or regional players. It is very difficult to compare regional brands with one another, especially where those companies are private and information is limited. Although size is often a leading indicator of a company's well being, it does not necessarily equate to the health of the brand.
In the table below are identified five leading real estate brokerages that operate regionally and have consistently, over a long period of time, built a strong local reputation and brand awareness.
Best Online Real Estate Brands
Real Estate is no longer just an offline business and therefore building a brand online is becoming increasingly important. Many would argue that such a ranking should be based exclusively on traffic. Although the number of unique visitors was taken into consideration I feel that one should also take into consideration overall consumer and industry awareness and traction of these brands.
Since I discussed traditional real estate brands such as Coldwell Banker and RE/MAX last week, I have excluded traditional offline real estate brands in compiling this list: My selection for top 5 online real estate brands are:
Top 5 Most Underutilized Real Estate Brands
This category is not intended to slight any individual company but rather to list the companies that still have a lot of growth potential in their brands. All five of these companies have a strong and credible brand that if maximized correctly, can become even more prominent and more valuable.
The brands depicted on this table have different reasons for being listed. For example, HomeServices is the holding company and has deliberately downplayed its corporate brand in favor of it strong existing regional brands e.g. Edina. In contrast, GMAC Real Estate is the corporate brand, but carries the beneficial yet distracting brands of bigger brothers GMAC and General Motors (GM).
Top 5 Most Valuable "Lost" Brands in Real Estate
Brands can be easily displaced through mergers and acquisitions (M&A), which often occur as part of the race towards critical mass. As M&A have over the last decade moved up the food-chain from smaller local operations to larger regional companies, so have an increasing number of well established and valuable regional real estate brands been lost when a national company, in the majority of cases NRT, acquired a company and displaced the existing brand for a more valuable and recognizable national brand like Coldwell Banker.
Above table contains the names of some of the largest and most valuable brands that are no longer prominently featured in the residential real estate brokerage business.
For more details on the importance of building, growing and maximizing a brand in the real estate industry read the 159-page 2007 Swanepoel Trends Report. |
