Six terms, in plain words, with the team's own example
What Is a Real Estate Brokerage Platform, and How Is It Different From a Franchise?
Updated
Bottom line: A brokerage platform holds the license, the compliance and the files; a team or an agent keeps their own name above it. A franchise sells a brand and an office and charges for both. Real Brokerage is a platform. Houston Properties Team runs on it.
What is a brokerage platform?
A brokerage that exists to carry the parts of the business a team or an agent does not want to own: the broker of record, compliance, file review, the trust account and the paperwork. The people above it keep their own name, their own clients and their own way of working. Houston Properties Team runs on one: Real Brokerage holds the license, and the team's name stays on the team.
What is a franchise brokerage?
A national brand licensed to a local owner, who runs an office under that name and pays the brand for it. Agents pay the office in turn, usually through a split, a desk fee, or both. The brand is the product, and the office is where you go to be part of it. When you leave, the brand and the office stay; what you keep is whatever you built that was never theirs.
What is an independent brokerage?
One owner holding one license, with an office and a name of their own and every function carried by that owner: compliance, the trust account, the files, the desk. Most small Houston brokerages are independents, and most of the questions on the situations index for broker owners are questions an independent's owner ends up asking.
What is a cloud brokerage?
A brokerage with no offices to pay for. Agents work from wherever they work, the files live in the brokerage's systems, and the money the brand would have spent on buildings is what lets the cap and the fees sit where they do. Real Brokerage is one; the figures on the cost-to-join page are the arithmetic of it.
What is a broker of record?
The licensed broker who is answerable to TREC for every agent sponsored under them and every file those agents produce. Somebody has to be broker of record every day a brokerage is open. On a platform that person is the brokerage's, not the team's, which is the whole reason a team leader can lead a team without carrying the license and the exposure that comes with it.
What is a cap?
The most a brokerage will take from an agent's commissions in one anniversary year. Before it, the brokerage keeps its share of each closing; once the share paid has reached the cap, the brokerage's percentage drops to nothing for the rest of the year and only flat fees remain. Real Brokerage publishes three caps, and which one applies is decided by how you join.
Questions & answers
What else do Houston agents ask?
What is a broker of record?
The licensed broker answerable to TREC for every agent sponsored under them and every file those agents produce. Somebody has to hold it every day a brokerage is open. On a platform like Real Brokerage that person is the brokerage's, which is why a Houston Properties Team leader can lead without carrying the license.
For a broker owner thinking about stepping back, this is the question under all the others: who is broker of record the day after you stop, and have they said yes in writing. A platform answers it without asking anyone on your team to take on the exposure.
What is a cloud brokerage?
A brokerage with no offices to pay for. Agents work from wherever they work, the files live in the brokerage's systems, and the money a brand would spend on buildings is what lets the cap and the fees sit lower. Real Brokerage is one, and Houston Properties Team runs on it.
The trade is a desk you do not have for a fee you do not pay. Agents from franchise offices notice the missing office first and the missing desk fee second; which one matters more is a question about how you actually work.
Is Real Brokerage a franchise?
No. Real Brokerage is a cloud brokerage that works as a platform: it holds the license, compliance and files, and a team or an agent keeps their own name above it. A franchise licenses a brand to a local office owner and charges for the brand and the desk. Houston Properties Team runs on the platform under its own name.
The difference shows up in what you keep when you leave. On a platform your name and your clients were always yours; at a franchise the brand and the office stay behind, and the page on Real Brokerage sets out the economics that follow from having no office to fund.