Chad and Sandy Neumann have quietly grown their stable of sales agents with the help of Watters International Realty, a Texas-based franchise upstart.
The husband and wife team of Certified Luxury Home Marketing Specialists successfully inked a deal with niche franchise Watters International Realty to be the first team on the East Coast to deploy the upstart brand’s alternative approach to real estate brokerage.
The Neumanns got their start in real estate in 2006 and founded Neumann Realty Corp in 2009, becoming one of the most respected teams for buying and selling in the greater Jacksonville area. They’ve garnered attention in the industry and community at large for their work with first responders and the international orphan crisis.
Deep into their second decade of practice in the Jacksonville area, Sandy Neumann said the couple found themselves ‘stuck’ at a certain sales production tier. The options for growing a traditional brokerage didn’t appeal to them because of that model’s tendency to grow slowly and create uneven consumer experiences because of the lack of broker oversight.
“The old-school model says ‘just hire hundreds of agents, and a few of them will work out,’” Neumann said. “We didn’t want to build this monster of a brokerage, but instead we wanted a business that felt more like a family — fewer agents doing three, four times the number of deals per person.”
The duo were introduced to an unconventional, team-based model from Austin, Texas-based Watters International Realty.
“We accidentally happened upon a book written by the founders and instantly were like, ‘this is exactly what we’ve been wanting to create — we just didn’t know how,” Sandy Neumann said.
According to Chad Neumann, ‘version 2.0’ of the couple’s real estate business is focused on providing newer agents with the highest chances of succeeding when they launch their fledgling careers.
“The real estate industry has this problem of big-box brokers overpromising their new recruits and then nickel and diming them for the tools they’d need to have a shot at success,” he said. “We knew that was not the way we wanted to go. It’s just never sat well with us.”
Upon seeing how well Watters International Realty team was doing in its native Austin and other U.S. and Canadian markets, they believed the Watters International Realty system could work well in Jacksonville.
“We are confident that this is the best decision we’ve ever made for our business, and envision an exciting future with Watters International Realty,” Chad Neumann said.
The franchise brand’s founder, Christopher Watters, says he’s thrilled that the Neumanns are representing the brand in Northeastern Florida.
“The Neumann’s possess a staggering degree of market knowledge and we’re thrilled to help such high-caliber individuals grow their business,” Watters said. “We knew from our first meeting that Chad and Sandy were ‘the ones.’”
