In the 10 years that James and Penny Brockway, a husband and wife team, have been operating Brockway Realty, LLC, the company has been in steady growth mode, with a dozen agents now serving clients throughout the Houston and Clear Lake areas.
With Houston being among the most robust economies in the United States, the Brockways are seeing a lot of people relocating to the area. And to keep up with the influx of prospective buyers coming into the region, they’re using Realtors Property Resource® (RPR®) to enhance their research and client relations.
The couple first learned about RPR while attending the annual Texas Association of REALTORS® Convention in San Antonio in 2012.
“I met two representatives of RPR at the trade show, and we spoke about the product and I became interested in both the residential as well as the commercial applications that were still in beta testing at the time,” says James.
A year later, Penny was exposed to the benefits of RPR while at the same convention in Dallas.
“We heard Andrea Goodheart, RPR’s senior market manager, speak on the first day of the convention,” recalls Penny, “and I loved the synopsis. So I decided to sit in on the more detailed RPR class the following day, and I’ve been hooked ever since.”
The Brockways go on to say that they first started using RPR to learn about the history of particular homes in order to determine trending values over the life of the home. “When working with buyers, we review all the reports that RPR has to offer to determine important information such as the quality of schools in the area,” James says. RPR has also been instrumental when it comes to helping sellers determine a proper list price.
“As we learned more about the system, we wanted to take our use of RPR to the next level,” adds James. “For example, if we had a client who was only interested in distressed homes, we would research an entire neighborhood to ensure that the whole neighborhood was not distressed, which could indicate a permanently declining equity for all homeowners.”
“That would defeat the purpose of finding that diamond in the rough,” adds Penny.
While the Brockways haven’t seen any shortage of success since incorporating RPR into the mix, one example that stands out above the rest is when they received a call from a former client ready to list the home the couple had sold her just two years before.
“She had paid $186,000, and based upon comparables, I felt she would be lucky to receive a $210,000 sales price,” says James. “My initial CMA returned a best list price of about $210,000, but I felt that this would be difficult to achieve.”
Penny, the RPR enthusiast and expert, disagreed and ran a detailed RPR report that showed that the seller might be able to command a $220,000 sales price.
“In the end, we listed the home at $220,000, received a full-price offer and the property appraised,” says Penny. “Needless to say, our client was thrilled, especially since in the beginning she thought she would have to come to closing with cash to cover commissions and other closing costs given the short timeframe that she owned the house.”
“Since that day, Penny has preached the advantages of RPR to all of our agents,” says James, “and it has become a staple of Brockway Realty.”
For more information, please visit www.narrpr.com.
