Archive for January 4, 2012

Project Management & Product Development

SimonWarner / January 4, 2012 / No comments
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How it started

In the early part of the new millennium Simon Warner had been a national top producer, multi-million dollar and presidents club member, even a Realtor honor society, as a real estate professional, and Realtor member, for almost a decade. With this experience, it was little wonder that the company he had now chosen to affiliate with, eRealty, had sort out his insights into the grass roots of real estate transaction. His then Market Director, Ben Clark, and accomplished businessman and eventually COO of eRealty regularly met with Simon to get his insights on new ideas for company development. The relationship worked well and, while both Simon Warner and Ben Clark have moved on to new projects and companies, they still enjoy a strong creative relationship today.

PREA

CondoDomain.com

Zillow.com

Vast.com

USAA

The second and third time around

Following the purchase of eRealty by PREA (Prudential Real Estate Affiliates), Simon Warner launched his own brokerage, as did others in the company. Under Simon’s management and development, With less funds, experience, and capital than the other launches, the company now known as Market Advantage Real Estate, LLC – a Virginia based company, has managed to develop and grow where most real estate brokerages started between 2004 and 2011 have disappeared.

During these initial years of growth, other companies have ask Simon Warner to help them in different capacities. Simon has made contributions to companies such as CondoDomain.com, Zillow.com, and Vast.com doing everything from developing market a single market as City VP of Baltimore for CondoDomain.com to developing a national real estate brokerage data and service network for Vast.com. Simon’s contributions at Vast.com were instrumental in bringing about the real estate portal at consumer brand giant Overstock.com. The successes and lessons learned at Overstock.com, later became valuable for the development of similar portals, one of which is USAA’s Home Circle portal, which offers “preferred brokers” to its members. As of 2011 this system is powered by Vast.com’s white label property search.

Product Development vs Project Management

While the majority of Simon Warner’s work involves the management of people and processes, functions that neatly fit into the PM job description, many of the projects he has undertaken are for the development and marketing of specific products within an offering. For instance, Vast, Inc is not a real estate specific company, but rather it is a vertical search company, offering a white label vertical search for three major verticals – real estate, auto, and travel. The projects undertaken at Market Advantage Real Estate were primarily chartered, executed, and delivered to ensure that the consumer service and professional recruiting products were viable and continued to grow. At CondoDomain.com much of the focus offered by Simon Warner was targeted the hand-off of consumers to agents in a seamless process to enhance the internet based service product offering. In almost every case, his roles from content expert, compliance advisor, product developer, to project manager, his focus has been to develop, deliver, and market in a collaborative team environment.


Contact Me About Your Project

The next chapter

Going forward, Simon Warner has the stated goal of managing projects that generate winning products for innovative companies focused on strengthening the American economy and encouraging pursuit of the American dream.

Category: Product Development, Project Management & Project Development, Simon Warner /

Real Estate Broker

SimonWarner / January 3, 2012 / No comments
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Starting Out

In March 1993, Simon Warner decided to pursue a dream. Agreeing with his, some what reluctant wife, that he would take a 90 day leave of absence from his work at United Airlines to attempt to sell in excess of $1,000,000 worth of real estate before he was due back at work. If the goal was achieved, he would transition into full-time real estate brokerage. If not, it was back to his 9-5 job.


My Brokerage * My Agents * Homes For Sale

Successes

Ninety days and $1.2 million in sales later, an encouraged, but conservative Simon Warner returned to United Airlines to ask for an extension of leave. A request which was flatly denied. Now he had a choice to make. Strike-out into real estate or go back to work at UAL and forget about whatever success he had seen those first three months. It wasn’t much of a deliberation. The discussion had already been had at the Warner house and the couple was in agreement that the success had been significant. Before leaving Simon delivered his resignation, shook a few hands, surrendered his security credentials and left IAD’s restricted areas for the last time.

A few months later Simon Warner had the highest sale volume in the Loudoun County area of any rookie during 1994, even though he had only been engaged in real estate for 9 months at that time. His production continued to grow consistently and significantly over the next three to four years.

Transition

Fast forward to 1999 and, after a brief distraction into another sales and marketing venture, Simon is introduced to a new concept in real estate being built by a company called eRealty, later purchased by PREA (Prudential Real Estate Affiliates) for a strong 8 figure price in 2004. By the time PREA makes the acquisition, Simon Warner has become responsible for in excess of 8.7% of national gross commission revenue for the company.

Disappointed by a reorganization that results in all those agents and brokers with significant contributions to the company loosing their stock prior to the sale of the company, Simon chooses not to agree to work for the acquiring company. However, encouraged by his personal growth in sales and other significant contributions to eRealty, he realizes that he has learned all the essential skills to run his own real estate brokerage and to assist other agents in developing their own book of business.

Agent Development


Contact Simon Warner about real estate

The Birth of a Brokerage

In the summer of 2004, a new company, now known as Market Advantage Real Estate, LLC was born. The company was designed to help a select group of professionals to reach their goals in real estate by learning how to provide the best in service and how to build their market presence.

Utilizing the learned process from past successes for other companies, Simon Warner, quickly built joint ventures in title, settlement, and lending with Old American Title and SunTrust Mortgage.

Later, project and business development experiences working with companies like eRealty, Zillow, and Vast, Inc would assist in agent success systems like agent branded marketing channels for Market Advantage Real Estate agents and associate brokers.

Today, Simon Warner continues to be both the Broker and product manager at Market Advantage Real Estate, LLC. Under the his direction, the brokerage is one of the few companies, started in between 2004 and 2011, that has survived the carnage of the real estate collapse and the slow recovery process. Initially profitable in 2009, one of the worst years on record for real estate in the US, the company continues to serve its residential real estate clients through some of the best professionals in the business and expects to see annual growth in the triple digits during the period from January 2012 through December 2017.

Category: Real Estate Broker, Simon Warner /