Sharing Your Real Estate Office with an Interior Designer

Does your broker give people a reason to come to your office and meet the agents, discuss real estate topics or work to foster community relationships. Most of the best ones do and they have Chamber of Commerce Mixers, allow committees to meet there and do a good deal of community goodwill and service. But in a slower market, what else can they do?

Well some wise old real estate brokers are renting space to Interior Designers who have a continuous exhibit and work out of their offices. Wow, it works great - I recently visited a Real Estate Office like this in Palm Desert, CA, and understand many more are doing this now too. By putting people like interior designers together with those people that can provide homes, each type of business gets synergy off the other, and a ton of cross-referrals.

Additionally, coming from a Franchise Background myself, I know that co-branding strategies work, they work wonders in bringing customers in. My question is what sort of co-branding are you doing these days with your real estate business and is your broker in on these new trends which cater to the high-end real estate buyers? If not have you considered talking to your broker about this.

My feeling is that if many real estate agents are getting out of the business why not take up that space with another business that will also drive customers to your location? And realize there is nothing worse than an empty desk in a real estate office, that is a red flag to many home buyers.