a guide to
ONE SOUTH REALTY GROUP
WHO WE ARE One South was born from a simple observation: Richmond’s marketplace lacked a firm that either understood, or wanted to acknowledge, where real estate brokerage was headed. Traditional methods, messages, beliefs, and roles were still the order of the day despite strong evidence that the market was demanding a new model. One South stepped into the void and established its position quickly, despite the most challenging economic conditions in the past 20 years. “I’d like to think that we really do strive to understand progressive marketing theories, not just from real estate, but from all industries,” says Rick Jarvis, one of the Founding Partners. “The marketing of real estate is still largely in the stone age and the practice of screaming ‘We Are Number #1’ from every imaginable rooftop is a tired and ineffective strategy. Egotism and arrogance are not recipes for engagement in the new world. We wanted to change not only how people saw Realtors, but the services Realtors provided to the community.” Fast forward nearly a decade and what you will find is a multi-market firm continuing its steady and strategic growth with metrics that are consistently outpacing market averages. You will also find a firm populated by a group of motivated, ethical, and responsible agents who are of like mind when it comes to adopting the most intelligent methods for growing their businesses. And finally, you will find a firm that offers its agents the best transactional, marketing, and strategic support anywhere in the Metro, allowing them to do what they do best.
DISCLAIMER - The photos you see are intended to be representative of the Richmond market and are not intended to suggest that these properties are for sale. A list of available properties can be found by visiting our website. One South agrees to provide equal professional service without regard to race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, national origin or sexual orientation of any prospective client, customer, or of the residents of any community. Any request from a home seller, landlord, or buyer to act in a discriminatory manner will not be fulfilled. Photo Credits: Kent Eanes, Bryan Chavez, Trevor Frost, Courtney Bowles, Nick Kessler All Rights Reserved.
CONTENTS Our Philosophy
4
One South HQ
7
Residential Clients
11
“Mixed-Use” Brokerage
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Representing Projects
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Life by the Bay
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[hither] Marketing
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Our Digital Strategy
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Target Marketing
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Content Creation
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The Future
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Frequently Asked Questions
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Our philosophy is rather simple – separate sales from administration, adopt progressive marketing techniques, understand the numbers, and be open to change. We believe that if you incorporate these ideals into your business practice, everything improves, from performance and effectiveness, to work-life balance and professional satisfaction. Richmond is in the throes of a fundamental change and being exposed to it on a daily basis has helped shape our opinion of what is possible. The changes in development are obvious, but the far more subtle intellectual and entrepreneurial changes are equally important in Richmond’s growth, if not more so.
While we are nearing our tenth year of existence, I still think of us as a startup. A good entrepreneur challenges tradition and refuses to accept the past as the future. While starting a brokerage is not overly entrepreneurial, it does not mean that we should not adopt an entrepreneur’s philosophy in how we look at our industry. Real estate brokerages tend to be resistant to change, which, in our eyes, means opportunity. Despite the fact we are approaching our 10th year of existence, we still adopt the mindset of a startup and strive to stay open to the nouveau. I think that this progressive philosophy spills over in how we treat our agents, and in turn, our clients.
-Sarah Jarvis Principal Broker
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When it came time to find an office, we knew we wanted to stay in the city and we knew we wanted to renovate a property, but finding suitable targets for our specific needs was extremely difficult. The Fan District is not filled with warehouses in the same way that Manchester and Scott’s Addition are, so finding a property that checked all of the boxes was a challenge. In order to really provide the appropriate environment for our agents and their clients, we knew we wanted to be in an area of Richmond that felt familiar, was centrally located, and of course, had ample parking. We had a relationship with the owners of the property that would eventually become One South World HQ, so we took them an offer to buy.
I never get tired of clients telling me that our space doesn’t look like a real estate office. I would describe our office as an integral part of our brand. Even years later, it never ceases to amaze me how clients react the first time they see our space. Our office conveys more about our company than any piece of marketing material ever could.
-Tom Rosman
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RESIDENTIAL CLIENTS While a great deal of our brand recognition comes from our association with many of the high-profile revitalization projects we have represented, the large majority of our business still comes from representing clients in the purchase and sale of their individual homes. The majority of our agents built their practices by working with friends, family and peers on their personal residences. It is still at the core of our business. One of the offshoots of working with new developments is the exposure it gives us to not only the latest marketing and syndication strategies, but to far more advanced valuation techniques than most agents are familiar with. Most importantly, we are able to bring these techniques to our residential clients. As a consequence, we not only look backwards and analyze comparable sales, but we look out over the horizon and incorporate inventory levels and seasonal absorption into our pricing recommendations. I think that our clients value having access to the same advice and analysis that our most notable investor clients demand from us. And while we bring a great deal of value to our clients through our valuation skills, we never lose track of the fact that real estate transactions have never been more
complicated than they are today. The concept of ‘concierge service’ gets tossed around a great deal when it comes to managing the client experience. With our agents’ knowledge, connections, and commitment to getting all parties to a successful closing, we embody and employ a ‘project management’ approach to our transactions, ensuring success for our clients.
Clients who might only sell a few houses in their lifetime receive the same level analysis as our most notable investor clients.
-Laura Waite Managing Broker
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A ‘MIXED-USE’ BROKERAGE When we decided to form the partnership, we looked around and realized the development community had embraced the concepts of ‘mixed-use,’ but the brokerage community had not. The Richmond market really lacked what we consider to be a critical piece of the puzzle. The development community was just on the leading edge of mastering the Historic Tax Credit model for redevelopment, and needed guidance on what to do with the amazing old warehouses in Richmond’s evolving urban districts. They needed expertise that looked at all residential uses — apartments, condos, and townhouses — as well as commercial uses, to really find the correct balance. Being able to offer pointed advice about uses, sizes, prices, styles and ownership structure really allowed us to make a name for ourselves quickly. And while the ability to offer advice and expertise in both the commercial and residential world was key to our growth, so was the ability to leverage the promotional tools that each side offers. As one of the only firms in Richmond who is a member of every major sales database — CoStar, LoopNet and MLS — we can push our properties further and reach the most appropriate client base. At the end of the day, when you combine our ability to leverage the correct channels with our extensive professional network, we can target the correct audience to most effectively benefit our clientele.
-Tom Rosman
Director of Commercial Brokerage
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The development world was headed towards mixed-use; we thought we should, too.
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Pie Factory, Manchester
Perry Place, Manchester
The Reserve, Church Hill
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Price Studios, Downtown
Grace St Hospital, Downtown
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REPRESENTING PROJECTS Probably the greatest manifestation of our ability to work in a team environment is our success in representing builders and developers. We cut our teeth on working as developer and builder representatives and love the unique challenge each project presents. When you correctly assemble a team, you end up with a fabulous array of skills that really benefit your client. Not everyone comes with the same set of experiences so the team structure is critical to fully serve the people and projects we work for. Our project representation experience is peerless in the Metro and our list of clientele reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of the development community. We are extremely proud of our success in this arena, as representing infill and adaptive re-use projects is a complex and risky endeavor. When some of the best
and brightest real estate minds trust us to be their mouthpieces to the market, it is a responsibility we take incredibly seriously.
Project representation is a responsibility that we take incredibly seriously.
-Rick Jarvis
Lead Project Representitive
At One South, our Project Representation practice brings the following skills and services to the table: • Pricing, Absorption & Financial Modeling
• Administrative Support
• Website Creation
• Selections
• Brochure & Logo Creation
• Consulting
• Print Collateral
• Analytics
• Sales, Showings & Open House Staffing
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The Decatur, Manchester
Broadfield Lane, Kinloch
7 West, Manchester
A2, The Fan District
Tribeca Phase I-IV, Randolph
The Reserve, Tobacco Row
The Emrick Flats, Jackson Ward
Ginter Place, Northside
Bellevue Homes, Oak Park
Citizen 6, The Fan District
Marshall Street Bakery, Jackson Ward
A2, The Fan District
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LIFE BY THE BAY In 2013, Bay Properties and One South formed a strategic partnership in order to provide both brokerages with a deeper market reach and more resources. It has worked well. When we joined forces back in 2013, we felt that affiliation gave each company the opportunity to better serve the clients that call Richmond home but spend as many weekends along the water as possible. The two markets are extremely intertwined and being able to leverage our respective networks just made a lot of sense.
The Chesapeake Bay and Richmond markets are extremely intertwined.
Many agents feel that they can adequately serve both Richmond and the Chesapeake Bay region due to the proximity of both markets — it simply isn’t true. Selling along the many bodies of water that comprise the Middle Peninsula and Northern Neck is a different animal. In order to truly serve clients interested in property along the Bay as well as the numerous rivers and creeks, an agent needs to understand a variety of topics including water depths, views, drain fields, and the many rules and regs proscribed under the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act. At the end of the day, we help clients understand a market that is both subtle and timeless.
-Sonny Richardson Bay Properties Broker
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HALOGEN CONCEPTS It’s no secret that the real estate market is in the midst of a transformation. From the impact of the online search platforms (Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com) to social media to the increased diversity of brokerage models, the way agents, brokerages, and the public interact looks nothing like it did only a few years ago. The battle for clients is now occurring at many levels. It begins the moment a prospect first types the words ‘real estate’ into a Google search and doesn’t end until they select an agent and sign a contract. So it has never been more important for the agent to be in constant contact with their sphere of influence in a way that is engaging, informative, and valuable.
It has never been more important for the agent to be in constant contact. For any agent who has ever attempted to create and enact a marketing program, they can attest to the complexity of the endeavor. Copywriting alone can take months, as can developing a website that will make a difference. And organizing a database, selecting and implementing a drip marketing platform, and then executing it with the correct and regular frequency is an overwhelming process. In order to provide customized marketing solutions, we formed our “sister company” Halogen Concepts, a real estate specific marketing firm that serves One South Realty and its agents.
-Leigh Anne Jenvey
Creative Director, Halogen Concepts
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OUR DIGITAL STRATEGY Without a doubt, the single most transformative and disruptive force in our industry today is the web, and the rate at which it is transforming how we all do business is increasing exponentially. And we are not just talking about Zillow or Facebook — there are any number of legitimate applications that are being developed every day and we need to understand how to best use them. The web helps us not only craft our message, but create the pieces that carry the message, and to deliver them faster, further, and with more accuracy than ever before. And not only does accuracy increase with the implementation of these online tools, but the ability to measure any program’s effectiveness becomes far easier, as well. Better, faster, and more accurate is always preferable. As an industry, we are just scratching the surface of what the web can do for us. And for those who recognize the application of technology and the leverage that it provides, these are truly exciting times.
-Sarah Kerr
Brand Manager, Halogen Concepts
At One South, we believe that empowering agents to be their clients’ most valuable resource is one of our greatest responsibilities. We offer consulting/coaching for: • • • • • • • •
Web page best practices relating to creation and maintenance Content creation strategies Drip marketing and other e-strategies Social network promotion Analytics and other data metrics Retargeting and remarketing campaigns Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com best practices CRM and other client organization and management platforms O N E S O U T H R E A LT Y G R O U P | 3 1
TARGET MARKETING Recently, I saw a statistic that said we are exposed to somewhere around 5,000 advertisements in any given day. This number is 10 times greater than the number of ads we saw in the 1970’s. So being meticulous about who you target and how you deliver your message is critical. Statistically speaking, 9 of 10 homes that sell involve the use of at least one Realtor. And of those sales, 9 of 10 involve both a buyer’s agent and a listing agent. If you do some quick math, you realize that there is about an 80% chance that the buyer for any given property is already engaged with an agent and actively looking. It then becomes our goal to identify the agents who are most likely to be working with the potential buyer of the home. Agents tend to work with specific price points, geographies, and asset types, and we use their past sales patterns to predict which ones are most likely to be working with buyers we seek.
So when we launched One South back in 2008, one of the first things we did was create a system that analyzed sales patterns to identify agent tendencies — and over time, our system has only gotten more accurate. When we promote our properties for sale, our accuracy means we can quickly raise awareness and shorten marketing times for our clients. It has served us and our clients well.
When we promote our properties for sale, our accuracy means we can quickly raise awareness and shorten marketing times. -Julie Pence
Marketing + Content Coordinator, Halogen Concepts
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CONTENT CREATION
Google does not care how many homes you sold or how many awards you have won. They care solely about providing the best experience to the user who is seeking information. A one-agent firm operating out of a basement can outrank Zillow all day long if their content is superior. Quality and original content is what the web craves and those who create it will always draw traffic. In 2010, we made the commitment to consistently create the best real estate content in our market. We freely placed our thoughts and experiences on the web for not just our clients, but the entire public to benefit from. In doing so, we created valuable engagement for ourselves, our
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agents, and most importantly, our clients. We have written neighborhood narratives, ‘how-to’ blogs, marketing analyses, valuation advice, and market updates. We have broken down development trends and industry news in great detail. We take an ‘open source’ approach to our writing, willingly placing it in the public domain for all to interact with and use to their benefit. If I had to guess, our neighborhood narratives number in the thousands and our blog posts, commentaries, and published articles number in the hundreds. The writing that we do supports all of our promotional efforts. When the
public chooses to vet us, either as a firm or as individual agents, our commitment to content creation allows potential clients to understand our market knowledge and technical expertise. Frankly, we invite the public to research us because it allows people to understand what level of service and expertise they are going to get when they choose One South. Being comfortable with the capability of your advocates is extremely important, and we think our writing helps the public understand who we are.
At Halogen, we create content for: • OneSouthRealty.com • OneSouthCommercial.com • BayProperties.com • Inman News • Our network of content-based sites • Agent sites • Drip campaigns
-Rick Jarvis
Founder, Halogen Concepts
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One South Commercial Weekly Offerings Email
One South Realty Website
Luxury Homes Guide
reRVA Website
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Condominium Guide
The re|RVA Team Drip Email
THE FUTURE We are bullish on ourselves, the market, and the future and we are building for the long haul. While nothing in this world is given, we like the place we occupy in the market and we feel as if our best days are in front of us. We are expanding our systems internally and ratcheting up our support for our agents. The rate of change in our industry is incredible right now and we aim to stay in front of it. One of the great things about being an independent brokerage is we get to choose the tools we want and not be force fed systems designed by people who don’t understand our marketplace. This model has allowed us to find the best solutions available, rather than relying on the status quo to inform our decisions. For the agents who don’t adapt and adopt, yes, their days are numbered. But for those who understand the application of technology, their future has never been brighter. Each day, I read another prediction by some ‘guru’ about how the real estate agent (and brokerage) is about to be rendered obsolete. Perhaps I am naive, but all of these new technologies designed to replace the agent actually made the process more complex, not less so. People often ask me what I think the future looks like. I think in many ways, it looks strikingly similar as it does now, just with some better tools. The public is smart and they get it — they realize that a robot with a lockbox key, a Zestimate, and a one-click internet lender is a very risky combination. And while they may not want to admit it, the public does want to inject an agent into the process, provided the agent plays the role of advisor, interpreter, and advocate. When you dedicate yourself to providing the best advice to the agents that you work alongside and their clients alike, you will always have a place in the market.
-Rick Jarvis Founder
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For those who understand the application of technology, the future has never been brighter. O N E S O U T H R E A LT Y G R O U P | 3 9
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS How do you differ from other brokerages? If you rely on the numbers, describing why we are different is easy. We sell homes for more money and in shorter times than our competition. But if you rely more on your senses, then I think spending a little bit of time in our office, on our websites, or reading our blogs will help you understand that we see the world a little differently than most.
Aren’t you guys just a city firm? I think we are considered to be more urban than suburban by the marketplace, but that perception comes mostly from the high profile infill projects we have represented. In actuality, we do about half of our business outside of the city borders and about 25% of our business comes from our commercial brokerage side. So, on the whole, we are pretty balanced.
Are you a residential or commercial brokerage firm? Everyone wants to put us in one bucket or another, when in reality, we are truly a mixeduse brokerage. We love it because we get to take the best practices and most applicable techniques and apply them across the aisle. Our clients reap the benefit of our widespread knowledge.
How will you market my home? How any property is marketed varies by the type of property — its geographic location, price, condition, and the seller’s wishes — as well as a myriad of other factors. Yes, we use signs, MLS, and lockboxes, but we also use Zillow, Trulia, CoStar, Loopnet, print, direct marketing, our proprietary network of exposure sites, and any other method that will aid the cause. We don’t have a standard package as each property is unique. Offering a ‘one size fits all’ package is not the best way to go about it.
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About One South Realty ne South Realty was founded in 2008 by a group of like-minded Realtors who sought a better model for real estate brokerage. Seeking more progressive marketing techniques, data driven decision-making, a collaborative work environment, and some of the most professional support staff in the industry, the original ‘Gang of 5’ has grown to over 70 agents and staff in multiple markets, working out of our award-winning office space in Richmond’s Fan District. By focusing on the techniques that drive results, One South has out-performed the Central Virginia Regional Multiple Listing Service in every meaningful performance metric relating to growth, percentage of original asking price, and marketing times. Additionally, we have been fortunate enough to work with some of the most talented developers and builders in our marketplace and bring the same marketing acumen to our individual sellers as we would a multi-unit development project.
Services •
Residential Sales
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Commercial Sales and Leasing
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Project Representation
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Development Services
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Feasibility Analysis
Resources onesouthrealty.com onesouthcommercial.com bayproperties.com /onesouthrealty /onesouthcommercial
Quick Facts •
Founded in 2008
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Approx. 70 Agents + 7 Staff
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Golden Hammer Award Winner in 2013
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Named one of the RVA 25 in 2016 & 2017
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Satellite office in Mathews County: Bay Properties
/baypropertiesco
@onesouthrealtygroup
@onesouthrealty
2314 West Main Street, Richmond, VA 23220 | 804.353.0009 | OneSouthRealty.com Created exclusively for One South Realty by Halogen Concepts All Rights Reserved.