People Love BlueRoof! (or hate us)

I was reading Inman Blog and came across a post from Tuesday (no linkbacks) that mentioned this post from Real Estate 2.X which talks about how companies are buying the domain names of their company with the word “sucks” after it so people can’t buy that domain name. So, of course, I went and bought www.blueroofsucks.com because, like I mentioned on RE 2.X, if anyone’s going to talk about how much I suck, it’s going to be me. And then in my emal this morning Mike (our prez) sent me this photo from a fan, which I actually like quite a bit (ahem…)

              

And it got me thinking about how some people get so threatened by new competition, especially when you are doing things that are better for the consumer.  

Leaving the corporate environment of a large brokerage and founding a start-up is an interesting experience. Some people at my previous brokerage have been insanely negative about what we’re doing, probably because our business model is threatening to theirs.

Others have been really supportive and understand that there is room in the industry for different models.

Kind of goes back my last post about Good Realtors and bad agents…

But the best part about our new company is all the support we get from our clients. The consumers like what we’re doing because we are a new business model and most consumers really don’t like the traditional real estate models.

When I meet with people and show them our model and how we can help them they get excited about our model. We’ve had people tell us they were going to name rooms in the home after us and they send us incredible testimonials and they refer all their friends to us, which is the greatest endorsement they can give.

We’ve had other brokerage’s agents send clients to us to list their home because their broker wouldn’t let them do the same things we can do and we’ve had agents at other companies call us to ask if it was okay to put their home on BlueRoof as a “For Sale By Owner”, which of course we support. We’ve had title reps (and these guys know all the companies) in the area refer their friends to us. Last month we even represented a husband-wife Realtor team from one of the largest brokerages in town buying their property.

Many people have contacted us to tell us that they are not buying or selling right now but just want us to know that when they do they will be using BlueRoof.

It’s been overwhelming and humbling and very encouraging and we appreciate all the support we get. But just to be clear, we are not striving to get business soley because of lower commission rates- we are building our brand on our value proposition, which includes service. Some say you can’t have it both ways, good service AND a better value proposition, but we believe you can.

It’s really great that so many agents are so supportive. I have a lot of friends at other brokerages and I have a lot of respect for them and their business. There are a lot of good agents out there and I know that my model won’t work for everyone. Maybe someone is offended by the color blue- they won’t like BlueRoof.com.

And some of our advertising is silly and adolescent, but that’s only because our company is still adolescent, plus our president is basically just a little kid running around like an adult. We’re just in our infancy- we’ve only been a brokerage for three months now. We’ve done really well and had more success as a brokerage than any other new brokerage model I know of. Already in our first three months we’ve listed 45 homes and sold 42 on the buyer-side. That means we’ve already average about a sale a day.

 We’re trying to be different, and a little disruptive, because that’s what the industry needs and most importantly- that’s what the consumer wants.