Beyond the sale: Adam Sartin on building end-to-end real estate ecosystems
In an exclusive conversation with HousingWire president Diego Sanchez, Adam Sartin, vice president of franchise growth and development at Motto Mortgage, shared how real estate brokers can strengthen their businesses by moving beyond a traditional model.
“I lead our strategic growth for our franchise network and I really help real estate brokers understand and really leverage the power of ancillary services,” Sartin said. “We really have a franchise model that helps broker owners understand how to operate a mortgage brokerage compliantly, but really leverage that experience and provide a greater experience not only to their agents, but to the buyers that they’re working with as well.”
At HousingWire’s event The Gathering, Sartin’s session title made waves: Your real estate business isn’t enough anymore. He explained, “I really look at it as being a wake-up call to those owners that think that operating in today’s environment with that legacy mindset really puts you at a detriment. I really think of it as the blockbuster Netflix mentality.”
For Sartin, a new value prop means shifting from sales-driven focus to a service-driven one. “Consumers are not wanting someone that’s really just a transaction order taker,” he said. “They’re really wanting someone that is helping them through one of the most difficult, stressful, maybe expensive purchases in their entire life.”
That means creating an experience that extends beyond the sale. “It’s not just about getting the house under contract and walking away,” Sartin said. “There are other pieces that touch that transaction—mortgage, title, insurance, property management. When owners refer that business outside of their doors, they lose control of what the experience looks like.”
Keeping those services in-house offers brokers both customer and business advantages. “At the end of the day, you’ve provided great experience, you have a repeat customer, and that’s really essentially the basis of the business,” Sartin said. “You now get to have more control over having a positive impact on that profitability margin.”
For those slow to adapt, Sartin cautioned: “If you’re not evolving, you’re losing ground. We’re at that tipping point again of really having that legacy mentality of operating under the framework of what we see as traditional real estate industry to what the office of the future really looks like.”
Sartin emphasized that regulatory concerns should not stop brokers from expanding. “Compliance is the scary word that a lot of people don’t like and don’t want to deal with, but we really created a framework under our franchise model that allows someone to get into the mortgage brokerage space, operate a mortgage brokerage compliantly with the right tools and resources.”
His advice to brokerage leaders was straightforward: “Don’t wait. Progress beats perfection. It’s not only growth from the real estate side of the company, but it’s also for the ancillary side of the business as well.”
As for the future, Sartin pointed to consumer empowerment. “You look at technology, you look at data, you look at AI and all those things are kind of converging together to really empower the consumer,” he said. “Those that are going to stay at the forefront are those that really realize that they have to create an ecosystem to provide a better experience.”
