Each Friday, Robbie Briggs, CEO of Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty, writes about luxury, trends, business and more in the advertising pages of the Mansion section of The Wall Street Journal. Below is his letter of May 7, 2021.
FROM MY PERSPECTIVE
We are part of the Sotheby’s International Realty network of 1,000 offices around the world: Asia, Europe, Australia, anywhere you can imagine.
Lucky for us, two of the finest brokerages in that network are right here in our own backyard.
A little history: What is now Kuper Sotheby’s International Realty in San Antonio and Austin began in 1972 as a commercial brokerage. Kathleen Kuper would join her husband and son with the intention of establishing the area’s best service-oriented, residential real estate brokerage.
Martha Turner Sotheby’s International Realty in Houston has roots back to 1981. At a time when residential real estate was just a part-time venture for many, agent Martha Turner envisioned a firm grounded in knowledge of the market and the law, with every agent a principled and experienced professional.
You may already know our story. My father started Briggs Freeman Sotheby's International Realty in Dallas in 1960. I came on in 1979, then became CEO in 1983. Today, we are more than 400 agents strong across North Texas, including Fort Worth, Plano, Southlake and Lakewood.
Now, let me tell you what Texans can do when they come together. Of the 24,000 agents in the Sotheby’s International Realty network, 1,104 of them are in Texas. Last year, those agents, across the three Texas brokerages, achieved a total sales volume of $6.9 billion — nearly $1 billion more than in 2019. (And you know what a challenging year 2020 was. This bunch triumphed.) What’s more, these Texas agents referred each other $311.4 million in sales in 2020, more than double the referral business in 2019.
That is what a network can do — especially when it’s one full of friendly Texans. Every day, they help other friendly folks find the homes of their dreams. Imagine what they could do for you.
Robbie Briggs
CEO
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