For those of you who are with Prudential what are you most pleased with and how long have you been there? I have narrowed my choice down to two companies Prudential and Coldwell Banker. They both are very impressive and have relocation departments.

I would keep looking at other companies to be honest. With those companies you listed above you are giving away a LOT of extra commission just for the sake of working for a name brand. Look at the NAR stats, less than 8% of people follow name brands. 92% find them completely insignificant

Get the total $ amount too - it's not just the 6% franchise fee, for me it's also a $75/month technology fee on top of my desk fee on top of my franchise fee. Bleah. I love my Pru technology, but not so much that I want to pay and pay and pay for it.

How do you like the company as a whole...do you feel it's worth what you are spending?

At my Pru, I only pay technology fees, there are no desk fees.
I love them! They're totally wonderful and supportive and the agents at my office are terrific

ymmv

Its just like any other office that your going to see. I have been with Pru for almost 5 years. Don't let the relocation buzz hook you. With your split on top of Pru relocation % plus everything else really hurts your bottom line. I stop taking relocation because when it came down to it i could make more money from renting a house than selling one.

Its a good name and most sellers and buyers like the idea of having a large office behind the sell.

if you want to work for companies like that, your going to be working for them, not you. You can never get wealthy giving away so much of your gross profit

VM - different business models work for different people. And I know plenty of very wealthy agents who are with traditional real estate franchises. What works for you may not work for Houston.

tbtrackstar ---

To pick up on your theme, the vast majority of top producing agents are with a major franchise or company. The last Wall Street Journal survey had about half of the top agents & teams in the U.S. working for Realogy franchises --- Coldwell Banker, CENTURY 21, ERA & Sotherbys. Most of the rest were at Prudential, RE/MAX, GMAC and the big independents: Weichert, Long & Foster, Windermere, John L. Scott, etc.

Very few worked for the small companies . .

I'm with Prudential and i don't work "for" them. I love the company, they offer tons of FREE training and seminars, they bring in top trainers at no cost to the agent. And the name has a lot of pull where I am located. We have by far more listings, in contracts, and sales than any other company here.

Don't the NAR stats show, though, that people buy based on referrals and NOT the name of the company? I did an informal poll in a group I'm part of, and the numbers matched up to NAR's survey pretty well. So, does that big chain name really help, or is it YOU?

Referral from a friend
60 (88.2%)

Company name
8 (11.8%)

Randomly
16 (23.5%)

A good company gives an agent added credibility.

When someone refers, that referral is based on an individual's previous experience, associations and perception.

It's the entire package . . .

I believe a referral helps the small guy based on his personality, ethics, morals... Whatever...

Now if a buyer is wandering down the street without any input from anyone, now name is going to play a big part.

I always watch out for the no-name only because they are usually the crafty ones that have very creative ways of approaching a purchase.

May be it is only me, but I haven't had one experience where that no-name didn't try to pull one over on me one way or another. Plus most of the time they are dipping in both Real Estate and Lending...

I even had one try to get $10K just because... Not towards closing, just because he wanted $10K.