(Above) The Redbud Group, Keller Williams SouthPark
With the backing of his 25-member real estate team, Trent Corbin had been focused on his strengths: problem-solving, strategizing and staying on top of trends.
As president of The Redbud Group, based in Charlotte, N.C., he had built a gainful operation, allowing him to concentrate on his core skills, delegating to the group and handpicking leadership to manage the team.
Then, Zillow called.
“Zillow reached out to us and mentioned they were exploring talking to various teams about [Zillow Offers],” Corbin explains, whose Redbud Group, affiliated with Keller Williams SouthPark, is currently one of the iBuyer’s representatives.
“We have 60 people on the team now,” Corbin says. “We’ve scaled very quickly.”
In expanding Zillow Offers, Zillow has hired local partners, and to date, the company is in 11 markets. In Charlotte, The Redbud Group is the exclusive representative. After the agreement was finalized, Corbin and the group had to jump on preparations—roughly in a six-week window.
“It required significantly scaling in a very compressed timeline,” he explains. “We did a lot of training with Zillow, and a lot of hiring, and a lot of thinking through how we would structure our hiring. As various parts of Zillow Offers fell into place, we hired people into those roles so we didn’t have people sitting idle early on. We made sure we had the right people in the right seats.”
Of the hires, The Redbud Group brought on closing coordinators, expanded leadership and pricing specialists, many of whom were contracted initially, and then brought on full-time when listings shot up.
Now, six months in with Zillow, Corbin is fielding the increase in listings, and consumer feedback in the marketplace is promising.
“The response has been very good,” he says. “We have very strong demand. The feedback we’re getting from sellers is that the process is very convenient, and it’s great to know that they have the certainty of a closing date and a purchase price. It’s made things easier for people who want to be able to look for their next home without the stress of being able to sell the one they’re in.”
In Charlotte, where inventory is still tight, that convenience matters.
“The Charlotte market is doing very well,” says Corbin. “Inventory in our market is still low, and we continue to see upward pressure on prices, because the demand is still very high.”
With the jump in listings, The Redbud Group is gearing up for growth this year, and Corbin is eyeing the future with optimism.
“We have a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) of $1 billion of annual volume within the next three years,” he says. “Within this year we expect to close north of 1,000 transactions, and we expect that we will have, between pending and active status, hundreds of listings by the end of the year.”
Suzanne De Vita is RISMedia’s online news editor. Email her your real estate news ideas at sdevita@rismedia.com.
