William Raveis Real Estate & Home Services has started up 15 offices in Massachusetts in the last five years, including this Brookline office, which opened in March 2007.
Five years after beginning an aggressive expansion in Massachusetts, William Raveis Real Estate & Home Services has opened 15 offices and plans to launch at least two more this year.
The Connecticut-based firm has captured significant market share in towns like Norwell, Duxbury, Marblehead and East Longmeadow and closed over $1 billion in sales statewide in 2007.
Some in the industry say the company has grown by offering hefty bonuses and generous commission splits to recruit agents from large companies.
Raveis officials say they’ve been able to attract top-notch agents because of the firm’s focus on supporting agents.
“Essentially our business model is built around the agent, and that’s the reason why we’ve been able to attract the number of agents we have,” said Chris Raveis, the company’s executive vice president and managing partner.
With 385 sales agents in Massachusetts, the company handled 1,889 transactions, representing nearly 2 percent of all residential and land sales statewide last year, according to MLS Property Information Network. The market leader, Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, with 78 offices in Massachusetts, handled over 20,000 transactions during that period – representing 19 percent of the market share.
Raveis has opened offices in some of the state’s more affluent communities, including Brookline, Wellesley, Lexington, Hingham and Marblehead, where median home prices have ranged from $514,000 to $1.14 million this year. The company owns and operates the offices and has grown in Massachusetts by starting up new offices, not acquiring existing companies.
“Our plan has been to open three offices each year. When we first started in Massachusetts, I really didn’t have an idea of how fast we would grow. I just knew we had the right strategy,” said Raveis. “We knew that we could fill a void Massachusetts as a family-run business.”
The new offices have come at a time when the housing market in Massachusetts has slowed considerably and other brokerage firms are consolidating offices or closing up shop. In con-strast, Raveis opened four offices last year, when statewide home sales were 10 percent lower than the prior year.
Industry experts say that is an ideal opportunity for companies that wish to expand because struggling firms are more eager to sell their businesses and Realtors are more willing to move.
Norm Krayem, a past president of the Connecticut Association of Realtors, said the Raveis’ expansion has been aggressive. But he said it may ease, because with more agents, costs in-crease for everything including advertising.
“I could see that he [William Raveis] would slow down. Acquiring a large number of Realtors when the market is trying to settle down Â…might not be a profitable venture for them,” said Krayem, owner of Realty Estates in Groton. “You want to acquire agents when listings can be sold.”
In Duxbury, Marblehead and Norwell, the firm’s market share was just over 20 percent in the last 12 months. In East Longmeadow, the firm handled nearly 20 percent of all transactions.
But in places like Brookline, Newton, Hingham and Westford, the firm has a market share under 10 percent.
Still, the company boasts that it’s in the top three or four companies in terms of market share in those communities. Sales volume statewide in 2007 jumped 48 percent from a year earlier.
“We’ve significantly outpaced the market every year we’ve been in Massachusetts,” Raveis said.
Some attribute the company’s growth to its agent recruitment tactics. They say the company has offered attractive incentives to top-producing agents, such as bonuses and substantial commission splits.
“It’s my understanding that they have targeted a lot of the Coldwell Banker agents and a lot of their past growth came out of Coldwell,” said Donna Chase, of Weichert Realtors, The Chase Team in Norwell.
Some of the early recruiting came through the efforts of Betsy Currier, a past president of the Plymouth County Board of Realtors and state Realtor of the Year in 2000 that Raveis hired to open and manage offices on the South Shore. Realtors who know Currier say the company severed ties with her about three years after hiring her.
But Raveis said her departure was a mutual decision and she was not laid off.
Currier, who owns Red House & Associates Real Estate in Hanover, declined to comment about her years at Raveis.
Industry professionals say Raveis’ entry into Massachusetts gave Realtors another option.
“I think Realtors sometimes get disillusioned and therefore feel they have to try a different company. Realtors are famous for moving around,” said Judy Moses, owner of Pathway Home Realty Group in Brookline.
But Moses noted that offering financial incentives to agents doesn’t guarantee a company’s profits will rise or an agent will succeed.
“If you’re not producing it doesn’t matter what per-centage you’re giving them,” Moses said.
Steve Murray, editor of an international publication, Real Trends, that tracks market changes, said Raveis saw an opportunity because most of the state’s major brokerages either were owned by large corporate organizations or affiliated with national brands.
“He saw an opportunity for a family-owned regional firm in New England that was regional brand,” said Murray. “He believes he has a good business model and he can make it work.”
Murray said Raveis has something else that other privately owned firms lack: a family that is involved in the business. In addition to Chris Raveis, son Ryan serves as vice president of sales and marketing of William Raveis Mortgage.
“His intention is to continue to grow the company and his sons have key roles in this. So he has a succession plan and a way to keep this in the family,” Murray said.
