A major regional consortium has quit the Team association, but Team insists that despite the defection, it is continuing to recruit new members elsewhere and remains in good shape.
Confirming that Team members in Devon and Cornwall have decided to establish their own separate network, Team chairman Neil Parsons said: “Both structurally and geographically, WestCountry Team has always enjoyed a significant degree of autonomy, and although we’re obviously sorry to see them go, we certainly wish them well.”
He added that some members of the neighbouring Somerset and Bristol consortium may also opt to join the new grouping, although this is yet to be confirmed.
But Parsons emphasised: “The group’s finances are in excellent shape. Our commitment to supporting our members with a full range of products and services remains as firm as ever.
“The progressive roll-out across the country of our new cloud-based proprietary software package, developed in concert with our technology partners Resource Techniques, is going brilliantly.
“We are also currently in the middle of a major regional recruitment campaign elsewhere in the country, the fruits of which we expect to announce shortly.”
Comments
TEAM- being in a club of the weaker independents in the locality helps who exactly? I cant see how it helps the members other than feeling less isolated. Good intentions all round in the membership no doubt, but tends to attract the weaker independent agent in the area rather than the strong upward independents so its a self fullfilling prophecy ultimately.
From my experience of working for a TEAM agent the software company Resource Techniques seemed to be the only consistent financial beneficiary of the organisation. Someone is paying for their swanky offices thats for sure. The software never worked properly and their support matched their product. Its a sinking ship imho that attracts the underdog.
RT are a one trick pony and all of their websites are based on the Team template.
The catch is you cannot have an RT website unless you pay them their monthly fee for 'admin'.
Are these offices abandoning ship because of a rightmove style squeeze?
I think there's more to this story...
It appears to me that Team have been losing member agents throughout the recession. I hear this all the time. Seems to be alot of dissatisfied agents, but I'm not sure exactly what they are finding a problem with.
Obviously there are a number of other good estate agency networks available who seem to look after and value their members more so than Team do, networks like Home Sale Network, National Homes Network, and Move with Us.
There's plenty of choice if this Consortium which to create their own Regional Network within the embrace of a National Network therefore.
I must say, to a non-Team member, I was always confused about Resource Techniques involvement - Did they part-own Team? Why were they involved so heavily? Surely if most of their business was Team agents then this made them less competitive as a software house? And therefore, maybe ere wasn't the urgency to develop the software as quickly as it would have been had it been available in the wider marketplace?
I would be very interested to know why the largest consortium of TEAM has decided to leave and what they have chosen over Resource Techniques? I found RT to be poor in functionality, one of the deciding factors as to why I pulled out, they over promised and under delivered constantly.
When I worked for a Co that were in team I quickly formed the opinion that team was all about ResTech, ie it was a software package looking for users .... this became clear when in the early days I suggested that team was goiod but the software less so .... perhaps the upgrade will help.
When I set up my own business I decided to stay out of team because whilst several local agents were fine, my nearest 'team member' seemed to spend lots of effort jumping onto my new ads & phoning them out ASAP (which I guess is OK) but would not release his own new instructions into the team cloud until he had not only phoned them out, but had also often had me ring him to complain that they were in the local newspapers but not visible to fellow team members .... always 'sorry an Admin error'. As I was winning many more instructions than him, I got fed up so decided to avoid team ... its a good idea but needs, well, team players.
If you were good enough why would you join either? Always weak agents trying to group together to combat the best agents. (For the 1% that are actually any good, sorry, but you joined!)
Team- Independant Agents all pulling together as one team. As John Fisher said way, way, way back in 1987, the trouble is that each and every one of them will always all be pulling in a different direction.