I get emails from home sellers and Realtors asking why I’m not ‘hooked up’ with a big corporate real estate brokerage.

And as President of the Northern Indiana Real Estate Association I also get many more similar queries from real estate investors, some asking if I recommend they get a real estate license or become a Realtor (and thereby joining the National Association of Realtors [NAR] (a union like the United Auto Workers [UAW], which I was also a member of).

To save me some time in replying to the series of requests of my choices and experiences I’m going to tell of my experience and give more insight into the inner workings of Scott FladHammer and the rise that followed.

There is drama, suspense and, yes, a happy ending (for you romantics).

“I’m not a businessman – I’m a business, man.” -Kayne West

[for more on time saving secrets for Entrepreneurs, stay tuned because I'll be sharing how I shaved off over 4 hours a day while continuing to deliver fantastic customer results to explode my business ... ]

So, without further ado here is the story of my journey with a pseudo-monopoly real estate bully to becoming a real estate guru  (results may vary)

I found myself caught between a rock and a hard place: the brokerage I was at allowed me to help many more people than if I was on my own but there ‘guidelines to profit’ forced home sellers to pay high commissions and junk fees. And then there was still no guarantee that there house would sell. And certainly no guarantees that the house would sell in ‘x’ days to prevent a foreclosure or lessen the sellers debt obligations.

To make matters worse the real estate brokerage, let’s just call them Banker Caldwell, has some dicey requests for me that was never mentioned at our initial sit down orientation. The manager at Banker Caldwell knew I bought houses for my personal investment portfolio and he knew I had helped to developed the EZhomebuyers program. Now, the new procedure, I was told, was that Banker Caldwell would like me to put the Banker Caldwell logo on all of the EZhomebuyers material, website, marketing; everything.

I explained to the manager at Banker Caldwell, let’s call him Dick, that the EZhomebuyers Program was not solely mine to do with what I wanted. I also explained to Dick that the EZhomebuyers program requested a review by the United Stated Patent and Trademark Offices (www.uspto.gov) patent attorney David Tooley to request a USA trademark. This made it all but impossible to include some estranged ‘affiliate’ for no other reason than that a silent board member of the EZhomebuyers entity works at Banker Caldwell sub-station.

I also made the economic point that any joint venture to promote Banker Caldwell would not be possible without some kind of ‘consideration’. Consideration is the legal term for some kind of payment for goods or services received. Let’s face it,  what Banker Caldwell was asking for was free marketing from EZhomebuyers while others such as loan officers, Realtors and other local services, were paying to be on the EZhomebuyers marketing sphere of influence.

I submitted to Dick an analogy that while soft drink maker Pepsi Co. would love to have a can of their product included in ever six pack that Coke-a-Cola Co.  sold; you can’t ask the store manger of Kroger to do just that. The poor store manager would have a hell of a time convincing anyone at Coke of such a request, and, more importantly, why would he go to the effort?

I could see where a big corporation like Banker Caldwell was going with this and why it would benefit them. They would have their corporate logo on another real estate company’s promotions for free. And not just any company, but a company that has a specific niche that Banker Caldwell has practically zero penetration- creative real estate.

Banker Caldwell’s primary market is those lucky folks who have great credit and money to buy a house with a conventional mortgage and those home sellers who don’t need to sell; but who want to sell (HUGE difference that I’ll talk more about later).

While the small, Fort Wayne based EZhomebuyers company were targeting home sellers that NEED to sell and homebuyers (and renters) who could NOT get a loan. It may be a coincidence that the EZhomebuyers program was written about in the New York Times right around the time as my rendezvous with Dick and Banker Caldwell’s sudden interest in a local real estate powerhouse.

Heck, I would love to have my name and service blasted into a niche market that would have never thought of me otherwise. But as far as forcing someone to promote me for free? Na, I think that went away with the guerrilla tactics of the mafia (not that the Mafia is a bad thing- if there are any mafia readers out there).

Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.

~ Sir Winston Churchill

Since my unsettling departure with Banker Caldwell a life-long sales agent confided to me that the ‘office mom’ wanted desperately to covert me to the Banker Caldwell way of real estate, like a religious sect.

Several top legal beagles I lunch with have asked to ‘go after them’. But I figured why waste my time arguing in court about it when I could be helping others in need of real estate services. Which is why I got started into real estate the first place. I like to say, ‘I got into real estate, then real estate got into me.’

Next part in the series…
Do I hate Realtors?
No. I’m married to one.

To paraphrase from the Book, ‘I don’t hate the sinner- I hate the sin’.

‘I got into real estate, then real estate got into me.’

~Scott FladHammer, Real Estate Collector ©

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