We recently connected with Coby Chatwin and have shared our conversation below.

Coby, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

When it comes to supporting agents, we believe that real estate brokerages should never take a one-size-fits-all approach. Every agent varies in experience level and has different questions, specialties, and goals. Link Brokerages builds technology that dynamically supports agents and caters to individual needs in order to maximize career growth.

There are plenty of real estate technology platforms out there that brokerages have adopted, but very few truly add value to the agent experience. Our proprietary technology and services are designed to bring greater efficiency and convenience to the day-to-day lives of agents while offering an agent-first brokerage model with industry-leading commission splits.

Coby, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started my real estate career at 18 years old when I got my Real Estate License and joined my local real estate brokerage in Canyon Lake, CA. I was able to work with my first client and assist her with buying her dream house shortly after graduating from high school, and from that point on, the interpersonal focus of real estate made me fall in love with the industry. At that time I was starting my undergrad at Loyola Marymount University, but was able to travel back and forth to meet with my clients between classes and other activities.

While attending LMU, I studied Entrepreneurship and was exposed to many startups, specifically in the technology space. After many long talks with my mentor, Kreg McCoy, we agreed that the industry was headed in a concerning direction where agents were getting less and less support from their brokerage. We set out to change this direction, so I teamed up with another Entrepreneur from LMU, Joseph Screen, and the three of us started Link Brokerages – a technology-focused real estate brokerage with higher commission splits and dynamic agent support. Quickly after putting our concept into action, we saw that our platform and brokerage model added significant value to the agent experience. As we grew, other LMU Entrepreneurs joined the team, Andrew and Aaron, and we now are active in 3 states, have over 75 agents on the team, and are on track to create something that we feel will truly disrupt the real estate industry. We felt a lot of companies were overlooking or undervaluing their agents, providing a very cookie-cutter experience and taking significant commission cuts. With this, we were inspired to create a hybrid route for agents of all experience levels to receive personalized support based on actual needs, better technology that streamlines transactions, 1-on-1 coaching that accelerates careers, all while having one of the highest commission splits in the industry.

We believe there is a human touch to Real Estate that cannot be overlooked, which is centered around the agent. I am most proud of being able to provide a brokerage experience that makes agents better at what they do – helping others and building relationships.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

In high school, I met Kreg McCoy, who was a top-producing agent at Coldwell Banker Associated Brokers Realty. He has been a close friend and mentor ever since, and he taught me most of what I know about real estate now. Joseph Screen and I met as undergraduates at LMU while both working on our own software startup projects. Our official partnership began at a Startup Competition at LMU, where we teamed up for a TechStars Startup Weekend and were fortunate to win the competition. We realized we worked really well together and were inspired to pursue the Link Brokerages concept with Kreg.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

The initial capital to build our MVP came from Kreg McCoy and an angel investor, who is also an amazing client, Sally Waranch. They both knew that getting into a tech startup would be risky, but more importantly they believed in Joseph and me to build something special. Once we got the MVP off the ground, we were able to cash flow immediately through our own real estate deals and agents on the team. We have been able to continuously grow and reinvest into the business and technology since then.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.linkbrokerages.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/linkbrokerages/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/linkbrokerages
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/linkbrokerages/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@linkbrokerages

Image Credits
April Chatwin