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Major housing-market player Keller Williams Realty’s early 2009 North American launch of a commercial real estate firm included adding seven KW Commercial members in the Boise area. KW Commercial now has 19 members - eight directors and 11 associates – in Ada and Canyon counties, said Darrow Fiedler, managing director of KW Commercial in Idaho. KW Commercial opened the Canyon County office in Nampa by merging a franchise.
Ninety percent of KW Commercial’s agents in southwest Idaho came to the company from other commercial real estate companies, he said.
“All are benefiting from an agent-centric, training-and-education-based, profit-sharing business model,” Fiedler said. Agents run the model, which KW Commercial leadership supports locally and internationally, he said.
Texas-based Keller Williams Realty International took a nontraditional approach to launching and growing KW Commercial even as the market headed downward in early 2009. The company considers its primary customer to be the individual agent, whose customer is the public, Fiedler said. “Instead of a top-down structure as evidenced in traditional companies, we are a horizontally based business model, which means that every piece of our company looks at each other as equals to support each other,” he said.
KW Commercial said it would emphasize cooperating with all agents irrespective of their specialty and their company affiliation. The company shares its listings with other firms; it does not provide agent incentives to sell specific listings, Fiedler said. KW Commercial also trains residential real estate agents on how to refer commercial leads and earn passive income for doing so.
The firm is working to create an active commercial multiple listing service, he said.
Commercial real estate industry veteran Bob Sabino moved from an independent firm in Boise to KW Commercial about a year ago. He has teamed up with other KW Commercial agents and with Keller Williams residential agents to work on several projects already, he said.
KW Commercial’s “bottom-up” structure can work well for young people, people transitioning into commercial real estate as a new career, senior practitioners who want to be more independent, and others, said Sabino, a director.
KW Commercial has a written plan by which new agents (associates) can mentor, with experienced agents (directors), Fiedler said. This enables an associate to jump-start a career – sharing commissions based on his or her own support needs – while offering the director an opportunity for an additional stream of income.
The company probably is not as well suited to the person who wants limited responsibility, unless that person becomes productive enough to hire assistants, Sabino said.
Fiedler said that in the Boise area, KW Commercial has been the best fit among agents who want to learn how to build and operate their own, independent practices from a training-based commercial platform.
Gary Bates, owner-broker with the independent Michener Investments in Boise, said he has communicated with Sabino and some other KW Commercial representatives about properties, but that market activity levels remain lower overall. One challenge for residential firms that start commercial firms is establishing a unique identity in the commercial market, he said.
Keller Williams Realty International in early 2009 launched the KW Commercial brand, through its approximately 700 franchisees, to create KW Commercial’s own identification and brand, Fiedler said. He said one of the two partners in the parent company, Joe Williams, is a longtime commercial broker.
KW Commercial finished 2009 with more than 900 members in the U.S. and Canada, up from 153 in February 2009, Fiedler said. Buddy Norman is president of KW Commercial, which is led by a Commercial Leadership Council. Fiedler, Team Leader Carla Thompson and an Agent Leadership Council guide KW Commercial’s southwest Idaho operations based near the intersection of Maple Grove and Overland roads in southwest Boise.
Erica Hill, Fiedler’s wife, owns the local franchise that includes the Keller Williams residential firm and the KW Commercial firm. Hill is designated broker for both. Idaho does not license commercial and residential agents separately.
Some of KW Commercial’s recent hires in the Boise area operate their own offices.
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