Realty companies thinking globally
There’s a Realty Executives office in Crows Nest, Australia. And a Century 21 in Ho Chi Minh City.
Along with the Golden Arches and CNN, the American way of real estate is being offered to the world.
The big players in American residential real estate have been setting up shop abroad for several years. Consumers from Singapore to Amsterdam to Sao Paolo are getting used to the sight of the Re/Max balloon or the blue Coldwell Banker logo.
Not that it’s been love at first sight. Coldwell Banker President and Chief Executive Alex Perriello recently visited his company’s franchises in Spain, the Netherlands and France, and he said the “American way” has a ways to go there, at least in real estate.
“There’s no such thing as an MLS [Multiple Listing Service] there, or even an exclusive listing,” said Perriello, who was in Chicago for an international management meeting. “You’ll see a house with five different ‘for sale’ signs on it, all of them from companies who are separately trying to find a buyer. Then the owner might turn around and sell it himself.”
But one wonders whether that kind of competitiveness just might be a good thing for consumers in Marseilles or Madrid. Couldn’t it be viewed as Yankee hubris to go into a country and suggest a whole different business model for a system that doesn’t seem to be broken?
But Perriello said that, even if it isn’t broken, it’s far from efficient. “I think what happens [with multiple agents] is that you end up not getting service from anybody,” and the challenge is to offer a broader range of services in exchange for exclusivity.
He said there’s a growing consumer acceptance of the U.S. realty model abroad, “but the percentage is small,” at least so far. Coldwell Banker isn’t the only American company that’s trying to do that. Its sister companies, ERA and Century 21, are aggressively franchising around the world, as are Realty Executives and Re/Max, to name a few.
They’re getting some help from the National Assn. of Realtors, which is seeking to sign up agents and brokers in other countries for training in marketing and technology. Earlier this year, for example, it conducted classes at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.
The outreach in Europe goes beyond exclusive listings. Perriello said that the president of Coldwell Banker Europe soon will meet with Polish officials to discuss the possibility of that government creating a version of Freddie Mac, the quasi-governmental U.S. institution that buys mortgages from lenders and packages them into securities that are sold to investors.
He said that Americans’ high rate of homeownership -- not to mention other countries’ gradual embrace of “branding” -- has made our realty companies the object of international admiration.
“They like the way we do business. They like the system,” Perriello said, although there may be a few thousand anti-globalization demonstrators who would argue with him.
“They realize that, as the world gets smaller because of technology, it’s important to be part of something bigger and not just the local market.”
