There is good and bad points for every model whether it be a Cooperative, Independent or a Franchise. There is no perfect solution with the benefits of each but none of the issues. What suits you may not suit somebody else..

However, I think that the legal compliance issues we face in our industry these days is making it harder and harder for an independent to navigate the day to day paperwork. You really have to rely on your industry body to provide this sort of assistance more than anybody else. Every month seems to bring new forms, new procedures or changes to one act or another and screwing it up can be very expensive.

Leaving brand and buying power out of the discussion, for the above reason alone I think the percentage of independents in years to come will be on the decline. But time will tell!

I hope the larger firms in my area aren’t considering this.

I wonder if the lack of innovation within some of the other franchises was because they got caught up in the home loan whirlwind & looked at their agencies as bank branches rather than focussing on real estate?

Either way, many of them have a lot of catching up to do.

The group has developed some advanced internet marketing software just for the exclusive use of members along with some really cool SEO options/packages for members who like most of the industry just dont understand how it all works.

Thats not to say the group did it perfectly.. resources are always limited… and you can always do better… but what they did do was fairly advanced for the industry and thanks to some core individuals they really got a hell of a bang for their buck.

I seen one example which is certainly extreme and was not typical, but it shows what you can do if everyone works together in a group. It was a small rural town which still had around 10 local agents.. When you did a search on their town their office returned 6 of the top 10 results on the first page of Google. Two results were for their own website, two were from SEO initiatives maintained by head office, and two were by SEO initiatives started by their state council. Everything drove traffic back to their office.

Not only did their profile look amazing but their opposition was basically shut out as Domain and REA took out 3 of the other slots and that last one still was not filled by one of their competitors.

I believe franchise fees remain the elephant in the room which must be popping up all the time with due diligence. What many don’t see (yet) is that the internet has made them more irrelevant given that online is now the number one source and ten per cent is a lot to pay for just a name.

Robert, I’m amazed that LJ Hooker could sell so cheaply. They obviously haven’t used their LJHooker.com site & data the way they should. The new owner could be sitting on a goldmine, especially if they let agents build LJHooker’s web presence outside of LJHooker.com.

Posing this question is bound to excite one or two of them.

As a small agency I couldn’t care less. We have an office policy that any monies generated by any referral business by anyone in the office is shared equally amongst all of the staff. We are a team and do our best for each other. If one or the other decides to have a go on the internet to boost office and individual profiles, we pitch in and give a hand.

Christ knows what the world is comming to

And the launch of Google Maps just accelerated the process ten – fold. Long hail SEO!