Coverage and Time Off
Who Covers Your Clients When You Take Time Off
Updated
Bottom line: On Houston Properties Team, the Success Team keeps operations running and a teammate on your squad covers your clients while you are away. Texas rules still apply to paid showings by someone else.
Who covers your clients when you take time off on Houston Properties Team?
When you are away, our Success Team handles operations. A teammate on your squad covers your clients.
Every agent on the team has a designated mentor through the Squad Leader Program. You have a set person to ask about strategy before you go.
Coverage is a team mechanism. A solo agent has no squad to hand clients to, so cover gets arranged one agent at a time.
What does Texas require when someone else shows property for you?
TREC describes this arrangement arising when a buyer's agent is out of town or unavailable for a particular period.
Under TREC's guidance, a licensed sales agent who shows a property listed by another brokerage, for compensation, must get written authorization from their own sponsoring broker before that showing.
Settle who is showing what, and under which broker's written authorization, before you leave rather than after a buyer calls.
What keeps moving on your files while you are gone?
Our support team works in six areas. Two of them keep a file moving while you are out: transaction coordination and compliance, and client acquisition and lead conversion.
On transactions, the team manages timelines and deadlines, coordinates inspections and appraisals, and works with title companies and lenders. It also tracks each file's status and updates you.
On new business, the team monitors new leads for immediate follow-up, sends lead emails and texts, and sets appointments for property showings. Our full-time ISAs also qualify leads and set appointments.
How have teams and solo agents grown, by HousingWire's numbers?
HousingWire reported RealTrends figures showing the 250 top-producing teams grew per-team closed transactions by 405.4% from 2011 to 2022.
Over the same years, HousingWire put the 250 top-producing individual agents at 13.9% growth in per-person closed transactions.
The price side ran the other way in HousingWire's report: average sale price rose 761.6% for those individual agents and fell 23.1% for the teams.
HousingWire read the transaction gap as expected, since a team can scale far more easily and quickly than one agent can.
Filed in The team, for agents who are cutting back.
Questions & answers
What do Houston agents ask about this?
Who keeps my sphere engaged while I'm on vacation?
The team's own channels do. Three client newsletters go out each month to keep your sphere of influence engaged, whether or not you are at your desk. Our support team also oversees past client outreach programs and organizes drip campaign lists. The contact your sphere expects keeps arriving while a squad teammate looks after your active clients.
The support team also tracks client engagement and processes home valuation request alerts. You come back to a current record rather than a backlog. You also have a library of 2,837 pre-written email templates for every stage of working with a client, so catching up on replies starts from a draft.
Does the person showing my buyers houses while I'm away need a Texas license?
Yes, where the showing is paid or payment is expected. TREC treats showing a property for compensation, or with the expectation of compensation, as real estate brokerage activity, so the person doing it needs an active real estate license. TREC also cites TRELA: a licensed sales agent may engage in brokerage activity only while sponsored by a licensed broker and acting for that broker.
That leaves paid showings off an unlicensed assistant's list. On our team, the teammate covering your clients is an agent in your squad, and every agent on the team works under one team name sponsored by Real Brokerage. Where that teammate shows another brokerage's listing for compensation, the written broker authorization rule for those showings applies as well.
How does a team keep the covering agent up to date on my clients?
Through regular meetings and shared records. In RE/MAX News, team leader Johnson describes his team meeting all together every other week while staying in contact between meetings. On our team, the support team manages new client notes and feedback and updates contact information across platforms, so the teammate covering you works from current records rather than from memory.
Meetings carry the rest. On our 30, 60 and 90 day plan for experienced agents, the second 30 days include a weekly meeting with your Squad Leader and the Success Team to remove bottlenecks.