What would you like other agents to know about Tom Cafarella?
"I guess I would like them to know that he is a very fair broker in the process. He certainly treats people fairly in the way that he gives people that work hard the better opportunities to succeed. Certainly in real estate it’s a 100% commission type of role so you have to put a lot of effort in to get stuff out of it. So I feel that he’s fair that for those that treat the job like a full-time job and put in the effort he tries to reward them by giving them company generated leads and I think it’s overall a great place to work."
What has been your experience working on his team?
"It’s been very good. Everybody I’ve worked with so far has been great to work with. There’s I think 130 agents right now or probably more than that who are within the agency. I’ve met probably 20 or 25 of the newer agents. Another thing that he offers is a training class, a weekly training class to kind of, for someone like me who doesn’t have real estate experience I’ve had the opportunity to kind of learn how to do presentations in front of customers and things like that. I’ve certainly met a lot of agents through that class. It’s a noncompetitive environment even though we’re obviously out to get business in our own way. Certainly the people that I’ve met and worked with they’ve been willing to help each other out and give each other advice, those who’ve been through it before. I think the team’s been great."
How is Tom different?
"I would say he’s different in the way that he has a different model that a lot of other agencies don’t necessarily do. He works not only on the listing and selling of a property but also on the investment side so he has a branch of the company that basically flips properties. So they look for situations on properties that need updating and renovations, so that gives agents like myself opportunities to meet people that we normally wouldn’t get in contact with. He gives us the opportunity to go to the potential seller of a property and he gives us multiple options as far as how to work with them moving forward. So we can offer them either a cash investment option where they can get a cash offer on the spot and if they’re in dire need to sell their property immediately that sometimes can work out, where they say, look, we just want to sell it today. Also that works pretty well with estate situations where the family might not agree on a price to sell the property and things like that and they might want to avoid any conflict. And if that option doesn’t work you have the opportunity to talk about listing the property and trying to get top dollar. Rather than most companies where you go in and you just have the opportunity to try to list the property he gives you a couple different scenarios that you can present to the client and give them just more things to consider and more things to think about."
Is there anything else you'd like to share?
"It’s certainly a rapidly growing company. His office is based in Wakefield Mass. which is over 40 miles away from me and there’s actually quite a few agents that do that commute. We could all have the opportunity to work in our own town. There’s obviously real estate companies probably in every town in Mass. if not multiple but a lot of agents choose to do the commute a few times a week. Not every day, but a couple times a week because we feel that there’s better opportunities when we work under this particular agency. I feel that it’s worth doing the hour and half commute once or twice a week to get those leads and get those opportunities you wouldn’t normally get."