The Hanneman + Gonzales team at Compass Real Estate.

Real estate is increasingly becoming a team sport. A recent RealTrends report sponsored by ERA real estate, dotloop and BoomTown, found there are between 35,000 and 50,000 real estate teams currently working in the U.S. and nearly two-thirds of those teams formed within the last three years.

Agent teams began to form about 20 years ago, according to the report, typically as husband and wife. It’s a scenario familiar to Lisa Drapkin, of Coldwell Banker in Cambridge, who has been selling real estate for 22 years and has been working with different iterations of teams for 21 years. She began with an assistant, and is now partnered with her wife, four other agents and an administrator.

Drapkin said teams can generally be broken down into two types: those she calls convenience teams, which are built around maximizing the effectiveness of a very busy agent, and those built on lead generation. Drapkin’s team is the former.

“In my case, I’m the team leader,” she said. “My wife, Debbie Lewis, happens to be on my team. I only work with sellers and she only works with buyers. The other four agents who do both. My job is to think of ways to support everyone and grow our business. I’m the rainmaker and I’m available for folks if they want my help.”

Drapkin has no desire to scale her team to 25 agents. Her team is built around her personal vision of how to help her clients buy and sell houses, and that vision has grown and changed organically over the years.

“I think when I bring people on it’s for a specific purpose,” she said. “They fit what we’re looking for and, more importantly, what we have fits them. What we have is an ecosystem. We all grow together. I have a financial structure so everyone is invested in the success of the team. I don’t think we should be doing each other favors. We all help each other because everyone has a stake in a successful outcome.”

For Drapkin, the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts; she said working as a team gives her clients better service and more thoughtful input. Best of all, she said having an administrator running it all frees her up to do what she’s best at: sell houses.

“I like having people to collaborate with and pool resources,” she said. “Most agents don’t have administrative support. I can’t even imagine doing business without it. Nobody is good at everything. [Teammate] Nancy Dixon is amazing at showing properties. She’s always upbeat. I’m more systems-oriented. I’m a big-picture thinker. We balance each other really well. And we’re absolutely making more money than we would separately.”

The True Home Partners team of Coldwell Banker.

It’s Hard Work, But More Rewarding

RealTrends’ report said teams are hard to define, but Steven Cohen of Keller Williams disagrees. Cohen has been selling real estate since 1984 and began forming his team in the late 1990s. He said a true team is when every team member’s goals are aligned perfectly with the team goals in an effort to deliver superior results to clients – and it takes the right people and a lot of work to make that happen.

“I formed a team before anyone in Boston had formed a team,” Cohen said. “I study with top agents around the country. I’m interested in the best practices employed by the top agents nationwide. In Boston, there are respects in which our tradition-based thinking finds us lagging behind in implementing new concepts. The rationale was to deliver far superior service than an individual could.”

As with any successful business, hiring the right people and nurturing an environment in which they can succeed is vital to the success of the team.

“We have a nine-person team and we are constantly speaking to people we’re considering hiring,” Cohen. “We are known to take a year to hire people for a position. We need to make sure we’re a fit. Unless you are highly human resources-based, focused on the aspiration on the people who are working for you, selective and deliberative in your hiring, and continuing to ask yourselves the right questions, then you’re not a team by our definition.”

It’s not without complications: highly talented employees can be difficult to keep satisfied. Great employees want to grow and may grow out of the company, but the benefits of a good team outweigh the difficulties of finding new employees.

“For one thing, it’s very satisfying to be part of a team effort executed by like-minded people,” Cohen said. “It’s gratifying to feel you’ve made a difference in people’s lives, and your share of the reward is likely greater than what you could produce alone.”

The Steven Cohen Team of Keller Williams Realty.

Keeping a high-functioning team performing optimally is a lot harder than it sounds.

“In short and in sum, you need to find the right people and you need to be the right people, but all of it is more difficult than the glossy marketing term ‘team,’” he said.

Consistency Is Key

Partners in business and in life is a familiar concept for Nick Hanneman, too; the Compass Real Estate agent works with his partner, Chris Gonzales. Organic growth is the norm for the Hanneman + Gonzales team – they hired Brett Mensinger this year, anticipating next year’s sales growth.

“We’ve consistently doubled our business every year since [Chris] joined,” Hanneman said. “This year we hired a third person. We didn’t need a third, but I anticipate needing someone next year. [Mensinger] came from banking and after one meeting I knew I had to have him on the team.”

Each team member comes with strengths and weaknesses; the whole idea of the team is to play to everyone’s strengths. Hanneman said the most challenging aspect of teamwork is determining how each person works and tailoring the team to them – or them to the team. It requires excellent communication, he said, calling his team “a living, breathing thing that has to be flexible to produce the best result.”

“We look at the team as one business and one brand,” he said. “Everyone has to maintain that brand, that cohesiveness, so it functions as one entity. Realistically, if we continue to grow, we will have to bring on more team members, but I don’t want to become a manager to of a team and lose my footing in selling real estate. I think staying smaller is what we’re aiming to do, but I could see bringing on an assistant as a team coordinator. If the universe tells me we need 10 more people, then we’ll do it.”

Working with a team certainly leads to more income than Hanneman could generate alone, he said. It could also lead to taking more time off – if he could find the time.

“It allows me to do more business, but we’re in such a great market, I’m trying to take advantage of it as much as I possibly can,” he said. “Recently we took a six-day vacation to California and Brett covered showings, home inspections and calls. We were able to relax knowing the business was being taken care of. It was an effortless handoff and it gave us a taste of what a well-oiled machine can do.”