Real is happy to announce that the Brent Germany Group has joined the Real family. Led by founder Brent Germany, the brokerage had $113 million in sales in 2021, with nearly half a billion in sales since the company started in 2011. The team is positioned to be a top-ranked team in the state of Texas this year.
We sat down with Germany to learn more about his real estate journey, his team, and what it means for the Brent Germany Group to join Real.
Q: How did you get into Real Estate?
I got my license a little over 11 years ago back in 2011. It was an interesting path into real estate for me, as I was a web designer and database developer with a degree in Management Information Systems (MIS) and Computer Science from Ole Miss. I had been working with a friend on a real estate type of website, and I decided to get my real estate license so I could better understand the challenges agents were facing. From there, I worked full-time web contracting but needed to house my license somewhere, so I stumbled into Keller Williams where a friend shared a couple of leads and asked if I wanted to give it a try. The rest is history.
I had never had a sales job and had zero sales background. My job was to sit behind a computer. But I have always loved building, and to me, this was an opportunity to engineer a strong team and use my background to focus on online lead generation.
Q: How has your business changed since you launched the group?
We have seen our team really take off over the last four years. At this point, I am essentially out of production and can focus on the business, growing the team, and expanding into other markets like San Antonio and Austin.
It’s great to see how success is possible even in a crazy market like what we’re seeing today. Last year was a record year for us—as were each of the five years before it. We went from 2019—when we were high-fiving everyone we could see because we sold $38 million in real estate, to 2020—when we did $68 million, to 2021—when we did $113 million. Now we're almost at $50 million this year, and it's only February. It’s incredible to see what we've been able to create.
Q: What is key to your team’s success?
We don’t think of ourselves as a real estate team but as a real estate family. That's how we treat each other. We support each other at a high level and are our own biggest cheerleaders, but we can be our biggest critics as well. We attribute a lot of that to coaching and continuously evolving by keeping up with the latest trends.
Q: What brought you to Real?
I love Real’s tech-based platform because of my background in development. There are brokerages that try to do a tech-based platform, but few do it successfully. It is easy to feel disconnected with a remote model. But Real has built such a strong foundation, I feel that the scalability for our team and our brand is inevitable. As we become more profitable, I expect to sit back and contemplate how I can make my agents more profitable. By moving to Real, I can do that, increasing their commission splits and actually making them owners with me in our real estate business. There's revenue share, and those things that would have really been difficult to try and replicate on my own, I certainly wouldn't have been able to do the stock options. Are there bumps along the way with this transition? Absolutely. But Tamir, Sheila, Joel, and the Real team have been so accessible, responsive, and supportive. It is a team made up of absolutely quality people. That side of it was critical in our decision-making because I needed to make sure that I could always be there for my agents and to do what I needed to know I had a brokerage that was there for me. And it's been great so far.
Q: What are one or two of the biggest mistakes you're seeing agents and brokers make?
I love this question. New agents need to be on a team. If you're new to this industry, your first year is the hardest. One of the things that we're working on right now with our team is framing our expectations correctly. Real estate is hard work. For new agents that don't have a support system, it’s that much harder. You need to be on a team, you need to get that training, you need to get that mentorship.
For veterans in the business, if you can't keep up with the technology, you're going to be left behind. You've got to keep up with the trends. You need to be watching what Zillow is doing, you need to be watching what Real is doing. You need to know what everyone is doing and look beyond it, understanding what they're doing. You must keep up with the technology, and that's the biggest thing because it evolves so quickly. There’s always going to be the next thing coming, so you better be ready for it.
Q: What is the key to success in real estate?
This is a relationship business and customer service business. You cannot just treat it like a transaction. You need to be treating everyone as family, and you need to check in with them and see if they're okay. You should know who they root for on Sundays, and if their pipes burst. Real estate is, surprisingly, about much more than houses. It's all about relationships.
Walt Disney coined the phrase, “plussing the show” which meant finding ways to make an idea even better. I think that's really important: to always be rolling out the red carpet for your clients because it really is adding to your family. And if you have that mindset, and you not only say it but believe and implement it, you're going to be really successful in this business.
