Independent broker opens tech, marketing platform to smaller firms

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Takeaways:

• Seven Gables Real Estate invested $175,000 in a company intranet and marketing platform.
• CEO Mike Hickman decided to recoup some of the investment by licensing the platform to smaller independent brokerages.
• Five firms license Seven Gable’s tech, which includes over 400 marketing pieces and two dozen marketing campaigns, all white-labeled to their brands.

Mike Hickman knows that small independent brokerages struggle to match the agent technology and marketing tools offered by larger firms.

As CEO of the large luxury brokerage Seven Gables Real Estate in Southern California, he recently oversaw a $175,000 investment in a company intranet and marketing platform.

Mike Hickman

His 250-agent firm, which participated in 1,300 transaction sides and $787 million in sales in 2014, can absorb the cost of a state-of-the-art platform, but smaller, nonfranchised firms with 10 or fewer agents can’t.

Hickman decided to recoup some of his brokerage’s investment in its tech and marketing platform by licensing the platform to smaller independent brethren.

He has a big market.

Indie brokerages have proliferated in recent years, comprising 82 percent of all real estate firms, according to a 2014 National Association of Realtors survey. A vast majority of them fall on the smaller side — 89 percent have just one office, the same survey revealed.d

Five firms license Seven Gables’ tech, which includes over 400 marketing pieces and two dozen marketing campaigns, all white-labeled to their brands. The firms’ agents also access their MLS, transaction rooms, training tools, market reports, company communication and more in the platform.

Brokerages pay a one-time setup fee between $10,000 and $15,000, depending on the brokerage size, plus a few hundred dollars per month for the license, Hickman said.

Licensees also receive a monthly consultation with Seven Gables Real Estate Chief Marketing Officer Julie Kozich for the contract’s first three months and on a quarterly basis thereafter.

“We see this offering as putting our full-time staff of five graphic artists and creative works specialists on the teams of all of our brokers who license the platform,” Kozich said.

The updates Seven Gables makes to the platform — such as adding additional marketing materials or new designs — also automatically show up in its licensees’ systems.

Email Paul Hagey.