MU: We've been searching for a partner for years, and it's the right time for us to do it because we now have over 130 offices on a global scale. We believe that real estate commissions have really condensed, so in order to stay alive as a brokerage firm, you really have to look at different ways of improving the customer service and the customer experience. But you also need to monetize that experience so that you can actually stay profitable, so that you can deliver the experience to the agent, so that the agents can deliver the experience to the consumer, and so that everybody can still have that full-service brokerage.
MU: Brokerages that have ancillary businesses and have the ability to create revenue through other resources other than just the brokerage. Given the fact that there's been such a commission compression between the broker and the agents, the agents have been receiving more and more of the commission than the brokers have. That's due to competition, and all of these companies competing for recruitment and really chasing agents. The reality is that the amount of money that the brokers are receiving right now through commissions is not enough to keep them alive.
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