Vanessa Bergmark
Owner/CEO
Red Oak Realty, a member of Leading Real Estate Companies of the World®
San Francisco, California
www.redoakrealty.com
Region served: San Francisco’s East Bay
Years in real estate: 19
Number of offices: 5
Number of agents: 155
Motto/work philosophy that you live by: Have a sense of urgency. I don’t believe in complacency when running a business.
Jameson Doris: What’s your secret to staying relevant in today’s ever-changing real estate landscape?
Vanessa Bergmark: Staying educated and staying involved. If you’re not going out and engaging and staying in the know, you’re missing out on the next move. Going to events and knowing and understanding consumer behavior is a great place to start, but you need to constantly evolve if you’re going to stay relevant.
JD: What do you anticipate the housing market to look like as we head into winter?
VB: What the rest of the country is seeing right now, we’ve been seeing forever. Do I see 30% – 40% gains year-over-year? That will probably slow down, but the market will stay hot. That being said, there isn’t anything I can foresee that would significantly impact our market in a negative way, despite a devastating earthquake. Do I think we will see homes going for a million over asking price in the months ahead? That probably won’t happen.
JD: How do you stay in touch with your clients?
VB: We use RealScout, text, voicemail and every other tech platform you can think of. After plugging a client’s information into RealScout, the way we reach out to them is pretty old school. Human relationships, keeping in touch, being in the community and staying involved are incredibly important. We don’t use AI, bots or Zillow.
JD: In what ways have you helped your agents cope with the challenges associated with the pandemic?
VB: Throughout the pandemic, we’ve had two priorities: safety and order. There was a lot of chaos during and not a lot of structure, so we worked with other brokerages on office protocols. We were ultimately remote, but we had a new message and made sure we stayed in constant contact with our agents. We were always available, and we planned 10 – 15 virtual meetings a week that agents were free to drop into. We had to create a whole new structure. We helped a lot of smaller brokerages with this structure, and we think it will work in future crises.
JD: How do you attract the top agents in your area?
VB: We attract agents in much the same way we attract clients. We don’t do a ton of recruiting, but rather, we focus on our culture—and people usually seek us out. There are very few boutiques in our area, as they’ve all consolidated into other brokerages, so agents come to us because we’re the other option. But my main focus is to make sure my current agents are happy.
JD: Where do you see your business in five years?
VB: I see it starting to grow in ancillary services. I see myself going into post-production, post-sale, etc. I also see myself partnering with other companies so that I can find other pieces of the puzzle besides just a simple brokerage.
For more information, please visit www.leadingre.com.
Jameson Doris is RISMedia’s social media/blog editor. Email him your real estate news ideas to jdoris@rismedia.com.
Vanessa, well stated.