ALISO VIEJO, CA, November 9, 2006 – Smart brokers across the country are changing, downscaling and right-sizing their firms as the market continues to soften.  “If proper business planning was ever important, it is now crucial,” says Allen Wright, SVP of CreateAPlan.

Consider the following scenario.  Unit sales are down.  Price appreciation has slowed, leveled off or even declined.  The future for some of your agents sadly looks dreary.  You may have to make some cuts soon.  Economic climate overall  is still positive, but who know how to prepare your company for all meaningful scenarios.  You have a lot of planning ahead.  With all that in mind, you need a good, solid feasible business plan.  One that allows you the option to recruit and retain the agents that best fit your environment. 

Your plan should also evaluate the size, shape and style of your firm, examine the services you are willing to provide to the consumer as well as the support services and training you will be providing your agents.

Start by establishing a baseline of your current office.  This baseline would be a current snap shot of the existing agents and commission structures offered.  Next, calculate the revenue and fees charged to the agents and any direct expenses paid on behalf of the agent by the broker.  Apply some production assumptions to each of these agents or groups of agents and then add the brokerage expenses such as salaries, overhead, marketing, training and recruiting costs. Determine what is your overhead per agent, what commission structure provide a profit to the brokerage, and what agents are the most profitable based on expenses applied on a per transaction basis? 

Once you have this information you are then able to size your office.  It is often the hardest part of a broker’s job to inform someone that they should probably find a new line of work.  As a business owner, you should review the agents with a keen eye towards current fit and profitability.  As this market is tightening, you need to remove the dead weight.

To resize your office just a few of the several considerations you have to consider include physical location, number of offices, target and goals, the correct number of agents to achieve that goal, overhead projection, transactional charges, etc.

Now any broker can have the power to manage any size real estate office effectively with a dynamic online real estate business plan specifically designed to help brokers.  Call Allen Wright at 949-600-7176 today for a demo or go to www.CreateAPlan.com