William Raveis is nothing if not innovative.
Forty years after starting in a one-room office above a Fairfield grocery, his eponymous, family-owned realty agency, now based in Ridgefield, has grown to more than 3,500 brokers and agents in 100 offices stretching from Maine to New York.
But a sea-change has recast the industry in recent years, spurred by the proliferation of online housing-market data — once accessible only to agents and brokers — only a mouse-click away to consumers, lenders and rival realty agents from sources such as Zillow.com and Realtor.com.
Also, alternative realty-service providers have emerged to sate the rising “sell-it-yourself” trend exacerbated by the most-recent real estate slump and recession.
That left Raveis to ponder: “What is the role of the agent?”
His solution, he says, may prove invaluable over the long haul, not just to his firm, but the entire industry. He is retooling the William Raveis model to bundle agents’ traditional skills and tasks with “teammates” who have financial, legal and other expertise into a “one-stop shopping” service for clients. In the process, Raveis hopes to inject more value into his brokerage’s fees and commissions.
The role of agents always has been to list and prepare properties for sale and shepherd communications between seller and buyer toward closing. In between, agents and their clients juggle other tasks tied to the sale, such as shopping for a mortgage and homeowner’s insurance, or lining up contractors for pre- and post-sale repairs and renovations.
“Now, [a Raveis] agent will have a team who will show up,” Raveis said, “to not only list the house, but with a lawyer, insurance agent and loan officer to help close the deal.”
“We’re reinventing the role of the real estate agent,” he said, “and we think we’ll reinvent the industry.”
— Gregory Seay
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