A Question of Relevancy
Category Market News
A Question of Relevancy
It seems like just a couple of months ago we announce major growth in our national footprint by the awarding of 6 new franchises and now, so soon after, here we go again.
Century 21 is proud to announce that the Richards Bay, Cape Town City Bowl and Cape Town Atlantic Seaboard franchises have been awarded. This represents another 3 offices nationwide. We look forward to partnering our new franchisees and will ensure that they experience the full benefits of the brand.
The Century 21 brand has now a firm “foothold” nationally and has gained traction amongst real estate business owners. Existing real estate business owners, whether they operate other branded offices or are independents, experienced estate agents wanting to be principals of their own companies and professional people wanting to get into the industry seem to be attracted to the Century 21 brand not only due to its magnificent offerings and its stature, but it seems mainly due to its relevancy in what it’s benefits are and within the market place now and in the future.
According to Harry Nicolaides, CEO of Century 21 South Africa, the days of a brand just adding a logo to standard documentation (that is available to all in any case) and purchasing an “off the shelf website” and adding a logo to it and lastly, offering “text book” training and calling itself a professional and desired property brand are long gone. Nowadays, and rightfully so, the most important factor when choosing a property brand is the aspect of relevance – the question of who, what, why and when, the proof of favour amongst other franchisees, the question of creating tradable and tangible goodwill in the business should a change occur in the franchisee’s life, succession plans, definite structures and with regards to networking nationally (and globally) with other relevant colleagues are all relevant factors that determines if anybody that is interested in getting in (or staying in) the industry is in fact serious about giving their business the very best chance to succeed or not and, its relevance moving forward in the years to come.
Digging deeper into the question of relevance, Harry goes on to say that as the qualification criteria of estate agents gets more and more onerous, their worth and marketability as representatives of a principal’s business is becoming more and more critical and now they themselves are asking the question if their existing brand is in fact relevant – questions of whether the brand has staying power, and if it will grow and why, and can it compete and how will it compete and most importantly... is the agent growing and building up a goodwill factor in their territory and in their career or are they just helping the principal create wealth for themselves.
At Century 21, the agent does not represent the principal who represents Century 21. With us, the agents and the principal, in an indivisible manner, both represent the Century 21 brand collectively and severally and either party is not more important than the other – in other words and for example, the principal of a very large Century 21 office in New York that has 50 agents has the same stature and importance as the individual Century 21 agent working, for example, in Witbank Mpumalanga.
Century 21 is the world’s largest real estate sales organization with over 7 100 offices in 75 countries and over 102 000 estate agents – these facts are relevant and we invite interested parties to contact us and to find out more about the benefits to them of this global property phenomenon.
Author: Century 21 South Africa
