Big Brokerages Are Taking Notice of NextHome. Here’s Why I Think That Matters in Northern Colorado.

Something caught my attention this week. Two longtime Keller Williams franchise owners in Southern California have moved five offices and nearly 400 agents to NextHome.

Obviously, California is a very different market from Northern Colorado, and we’re not trying to build a 400-agent brokerage here. What interested me about this story wasn’t really the number of agents involved. It was why established brokerage owners with businesses of that size decided to take another look at NextHome.

The things they talked about are the same things I hear agents talking about here. They want flexibility. They want technology that actually helps them instead of another pile of systems they’re paying for and barely using. They want control of their business and their data. They want the ability to build their own brand, but they also want real support behind them when they need it.

I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time thinking about those exact things lately because real estate has changed, and I think what agents need from their brokerage has changed with it.

This market is hard. I don’t think the answer is giving agents another lead platform, another login and another training library and calling that support. Agents need to know how to actually build a business. They need someone to answer the phone when a transaction gets complicated. They need help figuring out what to do when business slows down, how to market themselves, how to generate business without spending thousands of dollars buying leads, and what they should actually be doing on a random Tuesday morning when nobody is calling.

That’s why this particular move got my attention. Big brokerages are taking notice of NextHome, but I think the bigger story is that brokerage owners everywhere are being forced to take a harder look at what they’re actually providing their agents.

What We’re Building in Northern Colorado

We’ve been doing a lot of that same soul-searching at NextHome Rocky Mountain. Our home base is in Greeley, but we don’t expect every agent we work with to build their business in Greeley or spend their week driving back and forth to our office. Northern Colorado is a big market, and the brokerage we’re building needs to work for an agent in Fort Collins just as well as it works for someone five minutes from our office.

That means support has to meet agents where they are. We use Zoom when it makes sense, and Andy and I are willing to come to our agents. If you’re building your business in Fort Collins, Windsor, Loveland, Severance or another Northern Colorado community, we want to help you become known in your market, not convince you that you need to move your business into ours.

I also don’t want to build a brokerage where every agent is expected to build their business exactly the same way. There is no one-size-fits-all version of a successful real estate agent. Some people are incredible at building relationships. Some love social media. Some are great at open houses, community involvement, networking or working their sphere. A brand-new agent needs something completely different from an experienced agent who already has a functioning business.

What I do think every agent needs is a clear understanding of what comes next. That’s become a really important idea for us. Your clients shouldn’t have to wonder what’s next in their transaction, and you shouldn’t have to wonder what’s next in your business.

We’re building better systems around that, from onboarding and training to transactions, compliance, marketing and business development. I want an agent to know where to go when they have a question, what they should be working on to grow their business and what support is available when something isn’t working. And I don’t think you should have to physically sit in our Greeley office to get any of that.

We’re also putting much more emphasis on the individual agent’s brand. I don’t believe the brokerage should swallow the identity of the person actually building the relationships with clients. NextHome has started allowing more flexibility around agent branding, including things like signage, headshots and individual logos, and I think that’s an important shift. The brokerage should give an agent credibility, tools, systems and support. The agent should still be building something that belongs to them.

When it comes to lead generation, I want us teaching agents how to create business, not simply making them dependent on buying it. Portal leads can cost a brokerage thousands of dollars, and paying for leads doesn’t magically create a sustainable business. Learning how to work your sphere, follow up consistently, build relationships, become known in your community and create a recognizable personal brand may not sound as exciting as having internet leads dropped into your CRM, but those are skills you get to keep regardless of what happens to a lead source or where you hang your license.

That doesn’t mean every agent has to be a full-time, high-producing salesperson either. One of the things we’re working on is a referral path for agents who decide active production isn’t right for them anymore but don’t necessarily want to walk away from the relationships and knowledge they’ve built. Real estate careers change. Life changes. I think brokerages should be able to recognize that instead of treating every licensee exactly the same.

We’re Not Trying to Build the Biggest Brokerage in Northern Colorado

We’re not trying to put hundreds of agents under one roof in Greeley. Honestly, that isn’t the point. Growth matters because a healthy brokerage needs enough production and revenue to invest in its people, technology and systems, but agent count by itself isn’t the goal. I’d rather build a strong network of agents throughout Northern Colorado who are known in their own communities and know they have real people behind them when they need help.

I want NextHome Rocky Mountain to be a place where a new agent can learn how to build a real business, where an experienced agent can have independence without feeling like they’re on an island, and where agents can build their own name and reputation while having a brokerage behind them when they need it.

We’re still building some of this, and I’m comfortable saying that publicly because I don’t want to recruit agents by pretending we’ve solved every problem in real estate. We haven’t. What we are doing is paying attention, asking a lot of questions and being willing to change things that aren’t working.

That’s one of the reasons seeing established brokerage owners move nearly 400 agents to NextHome got my attention. They’re operating on a completely different scale than we are, but some of the questions they’re asking sound very familiar.

What should a brokerage actually provide? How much freedom should agents have? Which technology is worth paying for? Who owns the business an agent is building? How do we give agents support without trying to turn every one of them into the exact same kind of salesperson?

Those are questions I think our entire industry is going to have to keep answering. Here in Northern Colorado, we’re already working on ours.

If the last time you looked at NextHome was a few years ago, it might be worth taking another look. NextHome is changing, and so is NextHome Rocky Mountain.

Dixie Gray

Managing Broker

NextHome Rocky Mountain

Based in Greeley. Supporting agents throughout Northern Colorado.