Inman

Real estate companies find a place on top franchise list

Weichert Real Estate Affiliates Inc., today announced that it ranked 10th on the list of 50 top new franchises, published by Entrepreneur magazine. The company also ranked 79th on the magazine’s top-500 list of fastest-growing franchises in U.S. and Canada.

This is the 26th year that the magazine has conducted the franchise survey.

Weichert Real Estate Affiliates launched in September 2001, and this is the first time that the company has been named in the magazine’s list.

“Gaining this recognition is a wonderful milestone for us,” said Marty Rueter, Weichert president. The company, based in Morris Plains, N.J., has 108 franchise offices in 16 states, mostly along the East Coast. The offices extend as far west as Texas. Weichert has about 13,700 sales associates and a total of about 300 company-owned and franchised sales offices. Each Weichert franchise office is independently owned and operated.

Help-U-Sell Real Estate reportedly ranked 15th on Entrepreneur Magazine’s list of the 20 Fastest Growing Franchises in America. The company also said it moved from 98th to 44th on the magazine’s Franchise 500 list. The company’s fee-for-service model offers a menu of services for sellers to choose from. The company had 700 nationwide at the close of 2004, with plans for 1,800 franchises by 2008.

RE/MAX International ranked 21st on the list of fastest growing franchises, Keller Williams Realty ranked 36th, and Realty Executives International Inc. ranked 44th. Assist-2-Sell, a residential discount real estate company with 440 owner-operated franchises, ranked 25th among the fastest-growing franchises in 2005. The company, founded in 1987, operates in California, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon, Minnesota, and Ontario, Canada.

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