BrokeragePodcasts

Cairn’s Rick Davidson on the silver tsunami and their succession play for brokers

Today’s RealTrending features Rick Davidson, CEO of Cairn Real Estate Holdings. Davidson’s real estate services company acquired JPAR, has plans to acquire title and mortgage. Davidson talks how his business model works and plans for future growth by acquisition of new brokerage firms — no matter what the model.

Here is a small preview of today’s interview with Rick Davidson. The transcript below has been lightly edited for length and clarity:

Tracey Velt: A question I get asked a lot is how your firm and Peerage Realty Partners differ.

Rick Davidson: First and foremost, Gavin Swartzman and the team at Peerage are incredible professionals. And we’ve spent time together talking about strategies and their approach versus our approach.

We’re really focused on a succession play. There’s this silver tsunami happening across the industry, and it’s very real. And if you step back to 2006, there were a lot of real estate brokerage owners and other owners of various service companies in the real estate space who were either at or near retirement age. They were contemplating succession but the Great Recession.

So, we really think that there’s a tremendous opportunity for a roll-up strategy in the market today, as a result of many of these broker owners who are aging out and who are looking for succession plans. I think the primary difference between what Cairn Real Estate Holdings and Peerage are doing, is Peerage is looking for owners who potentially want to take some chips off the table, but really want to stay in their business for some period of time.

What we’re doing differently is we’re acquiring 100% of the asset, and we’re looking to optimize and drive efficiency across our entire enterprise to deliver a higher margin at the local market level.

RealTrending features the brightest minds in real estate. Twice a month, brokerage leaders, top agents, team leaders, and industry experts share their success secrets, trends, and lessons learned navigating this ever-changing industry. Hosted by Tracey Velt and produced by Elissa Branch.

This article has been updated due to a mistake in a company name that was mentioned as an acquisition of Cairn. Cairn acquired Your Castle and their co-brand Shorewood. They did not acquire, nor do they have any affiliation with, Shorewest Realtors.