Fuller Towne and Country sells to the power of Sothebys brand

BrokerIPTV: Today we are talking with Larry Simpson, real estate broker and one of the former owners of Fuller Towne and Country Properties. Larry, welcome to the show. Glad you are here. (Fuller Towne and Country sells to the power Sotheby's brand

Larry Simpson: Thank you. Glad to be here.

BrokerIPTV: I said former owner of Fuller Towne and Country Properties, we will talk about the sale in just a second, but I want to talk a little bit about your decision to start Fuller 10 years ago with your other fellow brokers.

Larry Simpson: Well, I believe it was in the late '90s, '99, we basically were all the top producers that had a little niche company called The Devonshire Company. It's a high end boutique company that just did a great job on the premium high end properties and unbeknownst to a group of us or to the whole company actually, it was sold and much to our surprise and so, they were going to take the company in a different direction and this was just, just an ideal opportunity for us to start our own company and specialize in the high end that we had done before and expand on that, just take it to the next level. So, that's what we decided to do.

BrokerIPTV: Well, as all of the owners, you had success quickly. I mean in 10 years you built a heck of a company. How did you do it?

Larry Simpson: You know, I would like to say, we were all brilliant, but the truth of the matter was it was a good market at the time. Just as we got started though, we were a year or two into it, we had the great crash in the tech sector, which kind of slowed us down a little bit, but we were able to grow the company because of just kind of word of mouth and the number of years that we had been in the business, we were able to attract a lot of good brokers and a lot of folks came with us and over the years we started out with maybe there was a dozen of us to today well over a 150 brokers.

BrokerIPTV: Last month you and the other owners decided to sell. Why?

Larry Simpson: The... a couple of reasons. #1, the company had grown to a size and complexity that it was just difficult for us as we are salesmen. We... our job is to sell properties and that's what we like to do. This had become a very formidable task to run a company this size, well over a billion dollars in sales, four offices, 150 brokers. It just grew to a size that it was just difficult for us to deal with.

BrokerIPTV: Over the years, there have been other people interested in buying Fuller Towne and Country Properties. You essentially, you know, said no to all of them, but you said yes to Scott Webber and his affiliation with Sotheby's. Why?

Larry Simpson: Because it was a value added deal. In the past, it was primarily just either individuals or companies who wanted to buy our organization and fold it into their existing companies and this was a chance for us to take that Sotheby brand and advance the company further. It was a value added transaction. Believe me, it wasn't about the money. As you might know, in the real estate market today, real estate brokerages aren't selling for a great deal of money. It's not why we did it. We did it for the power that the Sotheby brand brought us.

BrokerIPTV: You go back to now being a regular realtor instead of an owner.

Larry Simpson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

BrokerIPTV: What does that mean for you?

Larry Simpson: Lot more time.

BrokerIPTV: [laughs]

Larry Simpson: Actually, this is fantastic. I have got a lot of time to spend with my family and just doing other activities, but also too it has given me more time to focus on my business and I... basically it has been about 50% of my time in management and 50% of the time in sales. So, now, I am at the point where I am going to be focusing entirely on sales and it feels good and I have a little time off as well.

BrokerIPTV: Okay. Larry, thanks so much for being with us [Voice Cross Over].

Larry Simpson: Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it.

Posted on October 31, 2008 09:03:18 by Blog Author