Tripling Our Realtor’s Salary: How We Created a Unique, High-Earnings Team Structure.
Why Two Successful Realtors Decided to Partner…
Before I jump into exactly how we structure everything, it’s important that I explain how this all even started and what we do at our company: Open House Austin.
I got my real estate license when I was 26 years old in 2016. It all stemmed from a horrible experience trying to buy my first house when I was 24. My realtor at that time didn’t prepare or educate me at all for this huge undertaking. When it came time to make an offer on a house I fell in love with, I didn’t even have a pre-approval letter ready!
This experience prevented me from buying a house for another two years. Although this kept me renting, it also lit a fire in me. I started Googling “homebuyer education” and not only was it sparse, but not transparent at all! I knew I could do better for my fellow first-time buyers. I set out to be as transparent as I could about the costs, my job and the entire process. Through that vision, I saw a path to success for myself and others.
When people first get their real estate license, they learn that the end goal is to work with sellers and luxury clients. That’s where the most money is for the least amount of work. I was also told I needed to learn scripts when talking to clients and cold call to grow my contact list. I bucked against that concept and felt like an outlier among other realtors.
But I was new to the city and didn’t have a network of friends who could refer me, and it took me six months to make my first two sales. But after those six months of continuous networking, writing a book on buying a house and teaching concepts like house-hacking and the benefits of putting low money down on social media, I started to see a lot of traction. My first year in real estate, I made $50,000. By the next year, I’d doubled that. I did this by working primarily with first-time homebuyers with budgets under $250,0000.
That’s when I met another realtor who also bucked against the norm; Steph Douglass. Steph was a math teacher at the time and was renovating a property with her mom. She wanted to dive deeper into real estate, so she got her real estate license. She also loved teaching others how to buy a house without a lot of money or the highest paying job. Over the next couple years, Steph and I would collaborate whenever we could. We became good friends and even invested in property together. We had similar values and visions for our future. We both loved helping first-time home buyers and teaching them how to make that first home an investment.
That is exactly why we decided to partner and start Open House Austin in June of 2019. We would each put all of our commissions together in one bank account and take 50/50 split draws. To be clear, at this time we were not a brokerage. We were a real estate team and hung our license with a top brokerage in Austin. But we had unique qualities that other realtor teams didn’t seem to possess. For example, we created our own real estate education materials like our “How to Buy a House” book and our unique Homebuyer workshops. We were a real estate team but also beginning to become an education company.
Steph and I made the decision to partner for many reasons. The top three are listed below.
- We needed a break! Both of us were successful realtors at the time and knew that if we partnered together, we’d have each other’s back when one of us was sick or out of town.
- We had the same values. We both primarily worked with first-time homebuyers and loved to teach them how to make the first home they lived in an investment.
- We wanted to grow. We both knew that this would not be possible without help. A realtor’s job is so much more than showing homes and after getting to a certain production level, if you aren’t delegating, you aren’t growing. But you are working WAY too much.
We bought a small office in 2019 that acted as a space to teach home buyer workshops while simultaneously acting as a community event center. We were growing fast and in order to not crash and burn, I started to create systems for us. We needed emails and a way to stay connected to past clients. We also needed a more passive lead generating system so we could spend the most time educating and taking care of our clients. We needed someone to help us run our new community events building.
Our First Hires as a New Team…
Our first two hires at Open House were a social media manager and an events director (who also acted as a catch all for our little growing startup — Celeste was and still is our lifesaver!).
We then hired someone to help manage our leads and email funnels (business coordinator). At that point I was acting as a full-time realtor but also doing a lot of our marketing strategy and creation.
Steph started to bring in more of the real estate sales, so we decided to pivot once again. I shifted away from being a realtor and concentrated on our lead generation and marketing instead. Steph would be responsible for building a team of realtors to replace us so we could work on our growing business. That’s how we ended up hiring our amazing agent team!
Our Current Team Structure…
And how we transformed our small biz into a thriving real estate education company. And officially are our own brokerage since February 2022! It just made sense, we had a well oiled machine and grew out of all of the services our old brokerage offered.
Today, Steph and I are excited to have an amazing team supporting our vision: to expand homeownership throughout the country! At first, it was just the two of us helping people buy homes in Austin. Now, we guide people all over the country through our podcast, first-time homebuyer course, guides, workshops and realtor referrals.
The graph above shows the full-time staff support that we now have, but it doesn’t show the numerous contractors we have hired in the past few years.
For example, Steph and I hired a “fractional COO” when we first joined forces. We don’t have business backgrounds, and it was so helpful to have someone guide us with the setup of our business as well as defining each of our roles as founders in our company. They also recommended resources that we should tap into as founders, such as the book Traction, that has been a game changer for us. At first, the process of hiring, onboarding and firing was hard to navigate and very uncomfortable, but we have learned so much through doing this and have figured out how to attract a team that works well together. We’ve even partnered with people on our team to buy properties!
Our inventory of ever-improving resources provides buyers with the education they need to buy their first home (and so much more!) while simultaneously providing us with a growing network of quality leads. In this way, Open House Austin was transformed from a real estate team setup to a unique real estate company.
The main way Steph and I originally helped clients was through our realtor services. Now that we no longer interact with clients in that manner, we offer them a different opportunity to work with us; through our online course, Homeschool.
Services We Offer Our Realtor Team…
When I became a realtor, I was not on a team and I had to do everything on my own. I had interviewed with some real estate teams at Keller Williams, but it always felt like they took too much of my commission without giving me enough in return.
So, by starting off on my own, I learned the hard way just how much a realtor really does.. There was the constant follow up, lead generation, networking, answering emails…and, I only had myself to keep me accountable for all of this work.
I was also somewhat of a therapist to my first-time buyer clients: listening to their fears and coaching them through the biggest transaction of their lives! I had to track my spending, log my time management, and there was a learning curve with how to approach working with clients.
In the beginning, I spent a lot of time meeting with clients and showing them homes only to have them disappear — leaving me with no compensation for my time.
Steph and I took all of our experiences as realtors ourselves into consideration when we brought on our agent team. We wanted them to feel taken care of and supported! We wanted them to get the best leads and lots of them. We came up with systems for following up with leads and past clients as well as having someone handle setting up calls and putting them on the agents’ calendars. I’m proud to say that we now have a well-oiled machine and our agents have doubled, even tripled what they earned before joining Open House.
Making $8,000 per Year To $197,000 On the Open House Team…
March 2020 was the official start month for our wonderful new agent team of three. We were super excited for what each one of them brought to the table. They were bright, kind and hard working!
Two of our agents were new to the profession but had prior experience with renovating homes and project management. One of the newer agents, before joining Open House, showed earnings of $8,000 on his tax return. As a disclaimer, I talked to him about sharing his numbers prior to writing this piece. We call him the “realtor of the people” and he truly shares our value of being open and transparent in general and about the real estate industry. He quickly agreed to sharing his growth. This newbie agent learned a lot by first working to help Steph and I with client showings and writing up contracts. I remember when he started to go through the client call rotations with the other agents. I overheard him talking to one of our first-time buyer clients and was so proud! He was confident and relaxed and when they got off the call, his client was ready to get a pre-approval letter and start looking at homes.
Recently, Steph and I were shocked to see that this new agent went from $8,000 earnings doing odd jobs, to an exorbitant $197,000 as a realtor with Open House!
Each agent has at least doubled their salary since joining Open House and we’re excited to see them succeed. We not only gave our agents leads and administration relief but also a company and a brand they can feel proud of.
As of late, Steph’s role has been to coach the agents and lead their meetings. It’s been amazing to see them do so well under her wing and if they have any questions, concerns or resources, they know Steph has their back.
I wanted to share the inner workings of our team set up and company because many realtors have been curious about our unique setup. Also, the real estate industry as a whole is pretty outdated and typically doesn’t have a transparent vibe. I’m hoping that in the future more teams will create a better environment for their agents to succeed, learn and grow.
There are plenty of ways to *be* a realtor. But one of the most important aspects of the job is to remember that we’re working with real people — and each day is another opportunity to connect someone with a safe home and savvy investment.
Working with Open House…
If you’re a realtor outside of Austin and align with our vision and the way we run our business, I’d love to stay in touch. I recently started a realtor newsletter where I’ll share new updates on how we’re running our team as well as resources to educate clients and different ways that we can partner together. If you’re interested in working with us as a paid affiliate for our upcoming Homeschool course launch, shoot us an email here: Celeste@openhouseaustin.co
***We are currently looking to add one more agent to our real estate team in Austin. We strongly encourage people of color, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and non-binary people, veterans, parents, and individuals with disabilities to apply. Open House Austin is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes everyone to our team! If interested please DM me on Instagram with a few sentences about why you’d want to join our team.
