John Lynch
Title: Co-founder, DwellAgent and the Dwell360
Age: 36
Experience: 10 years
REALTORs are people persons, which can mean they have a tough time when it comes to tech. John Lynch spotted a gap in the market, founding DwellAgent to help make it easier for agents to enhance their web presence. Together, he and his partner Edward Johnston launched Dwell360, a Newton-based boutique brokerage which leverages the technology. He sat down with Banker & Tradesman to talk real estate tech and how to build your own brokerage.
Q: How did you get into the real estate game?
A: I got my license in 2004, and I’ve been practicing full time since then. Before that I worked for a company called American Greetings, which was a Fortune 500 company; I had a sales territory with 32 people working for me. I started with William Raveis after I got licensed, and built up a team, the Johnston Lynch Group, with my business partner Ed Johnson, [which led to Dwell360].
Q: What attracted you to the team model? That’s really popular in real estate right now.
A: We really enjoy it. We ended up doing a few deals and projects together, and our communication worked, and playing off each other as business partners really worked. It’s hard to find that, no matter what you team up on with anybody in life, and it just kind of snowballed from there. Real estate’s a demanding business, and we enjoy the demands. But it’s much easier to manage those demands working with a partner who’s equally invested in the business. Our clients understand and enjoy that, and they like having that availability and response they get from us in that way is very possible. And it’s also good because you can get a day off once in a while.
Q: Who came up with idea for DwellAgent?
A: It has a lot to do with the way we run our team now, what we found to be successful, and what we would get a response from in our marketing, whether it’s marketing our team personally or marketing our services, or an individual property. There’s tons of resources that agents have access to – but you get to this point where everything gets very redundant. You’re going here for one resource for one item, here for another, here for another, and you’re inputting the same information, same data. A lot of things are designed really great, but they’re designed by people who aren’t really thinking about who the end user is. Or maybe they are, but they’re a little too advanced. We’re technologically savvy, so we know how to maneuver through all that, but we’re spending our time using these tools when we should be in front of our clients, showing houses and showing property.
And so we really wanted to find a way to address the core issues or core elements of a real estate agents business and make it super simple to use, get them up and running, and make it look good. There’s competitors out there who allow a lot of control, to the point where these websites don’t look good anymore. Or there are services which can get it really looking snazzy, but you have to spend time to have someone custom design it. So we wanted to make it affordable, but give a really quality product.
Q: When you talk about services, what do you mean?
A: One of the levels is the individual property websites. Our sellers really enjoy them; they feel like we’ve done something unique and special for their property. From the buyer’s perspective, it really becomes a soft sell. So a buyer comes to an open house, or visits with their agent our listing, and they’re able to go back [and easily revisit this listing].
Q: The average age of REALTORs now is well over 50; you’re on the younger side. Did you feel there was something that was more intuitive for you?
A: What we thought was, when we were using some of these services from other firms, was, if this is cumbersome for me, it’s gotta be cumbersome for everybody else. We found success from a marketing perspective with these tools, but there’d be a lot of people who weren’t able to access that. [When we first started,] we found we were driving a lot of traffic to the individual listing sites, but it wasn’t coming over to our personal sites, to really [solidify the lead]. So that’s where we really saw the disconnect. Then, looking at the other demographics of the agents, we were saying, “They’re not going to be able to do this unless its simplified.” [That was our message to our developers,] because they’d come up with solutions that made sense to them, and we’d have to bring them back, and say, “This needs to be something that someone can do when they’re sitting in the bleachers at their kid’s soccer game.”
Q: So tell me a little more about the brokerage side of the business – I understand you have 10 agents now?
A: That’s been great. We’ve really focused on building a brand. Our structure is a little different, and we’ve embraced that and it seems to be going well.
Q: When you say a different structure, what do you mean by that?
A: Our agents have a set commission structure, which is a little different from other firms. An experienced agent gets an 80-20 split, and pays $89 a month to be with us. We just feel like we’re investing in their business long-term, giving them an opportunity to make a good living. A lot of new agents have these commission structures that have a low split, and make it tough for them to earn a living and get off the ground. So we wanted to keep it real simple. If someone’s brand-new, we might do something a little different there, but for someone experienced it’s 80-20. From a management side, it’s cleaned up a lot of stuff you normally have to worry about. And there is none of this sense of rolling back – getting to the end of the year, you didn’t hit certain levels of sales volume and you’re going to get as lower commission. And we also have a strong branding focus – with our listings, we have our own photographers who go out and take all the photos for the listing, and we pay for that. A lot of these marketing components, we’re more supervisory of, [to ensure a consistent brand experience]. And as a result, we’ve developed a really boutique culture, so it’s more of a group, more like a family. Which is hard to do when you have a bunch of independent contractors going after their own business.
Top 5 Best Practices For Agents’ Websites:
- It all comes down to the branding of the agent.
- Buyers want to know
who you are. - Use a blog to show off your local knowledge.
- Keep the site fresh – make sure repeat visitors can see your successes.
- Make sure all social media drives back to the site.
