Who mentors the new agent when no one’s in the office?

Brick-and-mortar brokerages are quieter these days. As real estate moves further into the digital realm, physical offices are seeing foot traffic decline year after year, leaving freshly licensed agents with fewer chances to rub elbows with seasoned agents and pick up the trade beyond what’s taught in the classroom.

The value of being in the room

Mike Krause, broker at Royal LePage Meadowtowne, started selling in 2003. He notes that during his first few years, a large amount of his education was through osmosis: simply being in-office allowed him to soak up valuable insight.

“It was such an asset to be surrounded by longtime, experienced agents…even just to hear the way they spoke about a listing in a sales meeting,” he said. “I try my best to be available to the new generation of agents coming in, but building relationships is different now.”

While Krause considers himself always “on call,” working from home like some of his colleagues during the pandemic was not an effective business solution.

“I’m a creature of habit. I’ve built my business around being in the office and for me, I find it’s like a switch,” he said. “To me, home is where I live with my (family) … I find that primarily working from the office helps me to be more present at home for my family when I’m home.”

Choosing to go mobile

On the other side of the coin are real estate professionals like Andrea Jones, broker at Remax Real Estate Centre. Although she was helped by a seasoned agent when writing one of her first offers in 2014, she now prefers to conduct her business completely online. Today, visiting the office has become little more than a semi-regular pilgrimage to collect mail.

“I actually found the agents who were in the office were either the closed-door type who are hustling to make phone calls and work their pipelines, or the ones who are less busy, socializing and distracting,” she explains.

Despite preferring to stick to a mobile office, Jones doesn’t discount the value of in-person social interactions, especially for newer agents.

“I think technology has made it harder for agents to access mentorship … at least without a big price tag associated with it,” she said. “It is my opinion that people can’t develop the same kind of relationship over texts (and) socials that they would … on the phone or in person.”

Jones adds that agents who strictly rely on technology for communication can miss out on understanding how to build rapport with other agents, a skill that can be invaluable in real estate. Krause adds that one way to improve those skills is by simply interacting with fellow colleagues at the office.

“In the real estate business, I find it is important to always be learning,” Krause states. “We chat about situations that we recently dealt with and how they were handled. Whether with client offers, listings, or something else, I’m always eager to learn.”

Building mentorship by design

Mark Wolle, broker of record of Royal LePage Wolle Realty, has seen the shift in brokerage space from being a requirement to now being a resource.

“In the past, learning was passive,” Wolle explains. “You’d sit next to a successful agent and soak it up just by being in the room. You can’t rely on that happening by accident anymore, so we’ve made the classroom mobile.”

Wolle created a nine-week training program for new agents where they are paired up with a mentor right away. This ensures newer agents have both working academic knowledge and an experienced agent in their corner, just a phone call or message away should the need arise.

While Krause applauds Meadowtowne’s initiative to provide mentorship and offer training, he finds many online resources fall short of replicating real-life lessons.

“I think in-person meetings and trainings allow for more organic conversations and lead to real-life examples being shared by fellow agents that give you more practical experience rather than just what the right procedure is,” he says.

By the same token, Jones hardly tunes in to any of her brokerage’s online resources, but not for lack of interest.

“I have attended zero,” she said. “Simply because I am so focused on my own business that I forget or think of it mid-meeting.”

A shrinking footprint

When Wolle became broker of record in 2011, the office was a flurry of activity, making the communal brokerage bullpen a natural, informal training ground for new agents. With the popularity of virtual training, e-signature platforms, and competing cloud-based brokerages with lower overhead costs, more agents now work from home. To stay relevant, brick-and-mortar offices have to work twice as hard.

“We’ve been updating things to include flex areas and cafe-style spaces where people can actually collaborate,” Wolle said. “If we’re going to have physical space, it has to be useful. It has to be a tool that helps do their job better.”

For Wolle, offering a physical branch has become less of a boon for recruiting purposes. According to him, newer agents are “shopping for a partner, not an office address.”

Both Jones and Krause agree that physical brokerage locations will unfortunately continue to shrink due to rising operating costs and the industry’s growing reliance on technology. For those who cut their teeth in the office bullpen, this shift could deepen the mentorship gap for new agents.

“I think more and more brokerages are looking to downsize to more workstations and less private office space,” says Krause. “I think it’s important to have these spaces…but I can appreciate that isn’t always the norm nowadays.”

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