Taking the first step
The application process takes time, planning and patience on the part of the potential owner as well. Mike Opyd and his business partner Rafay Qamar are new to franchising, though they have many years of experience in real estate between them. Opyd and Qamar opened RE/MAX NEXT this April, bringing to fruition a plan to open a franchise that had been months in the making. It took Opyd and Qamar about four months from beginning the process to the point where they were ready to open. During that time, they provided their financial information separately for RE/MAX’s corporate accountants to review. In some cases, they had to resubmit forms when the company had questions. They met with the corporate office for a formal interview, then put the final details into place, down to choosing an office.
“We had to get office space approved by them before we could do anything, so they came in to check our office out and approve that,” Opyd says. “We had to get our name approved, so they had to send that up the corporate ladder to make sure it’s good with them. Once all that stuff was done, they set up a meeting for us. We went to the corporate office in Elgin and that’s when we signed all the franchise paperwork.”
Last year, Opyd was planning to strike out on his own after spending several years working for Americorp Real Estate, Dream Town and Keller Williams Realty.
“I didn’t really think that any franchise would give me the flexibility to do what I wanted,” Opyd says. “I did my own commissions and marketing and those types of things. In my research, none of the options really appealed to me.”
A meeting that Qamar arranged last November changed all that. Before, RE/MAX hadn’t even been on Opyd’s radar as a potential franchisor, despite the company taking the top spot among real estate franchises in the 2016 Franchise Times Top 200+ listing.
Opyd and Qamar, who serves as owner and broker at RE/MAX Northern Shores and previously worked as a broker with Coldwell Banker, had met earlier in 2016 while they were both working a showing. Opyd thought that Qamar might try to recruit him, since Opyd had recently separated from his team within the Matt Laricy Group.
“We were talking and I was telling him what I wanted, a company where I could do my own thing,” Opyd says. “He started describing RE/MAX to me and shared what they could do for my career.”
The two arranged to meet again, and spent 12 hours in a Starbucks discussing the possibility of opening a franchise together.
“Rafay was telling me how RE/MAX is, about the flexibility and what we could do and how you have full rein to do whatever you want in terms of anything — marketing, commissions, education and so on,” Opyd says. “I wasn’t really prepared for the franchise route, but once he started describing it to me I almost felt like it was too good to be true.”
Qamar arranged a meeting with the company’s Northern Illinois office in Elgin, where Opyd heard everything that Qamar had told him confirmed. Weighed against his desire to open his own office, franchising suddenly seemed like the right route for Opyd to follow.