It’s not looking good for another real estate disruptor thus far in 2020, this one in the San Francisco Bay area.
Thursday we reported that Dallas-based DOOR (Door.com) has laid off 37 employees. Now Inman reports that real estate giant Realogy is closing the offices of a uniquely creative real estate firm called Climb, which Realogy bought in 2016. Realogy confirmed to Inman and Rob Hahn it is now integrating the company into its Coldwell Banker brand, and discontinuing the Climb name.
The Climb name, meanwhile, will be discontinued and Climb’s offices in California’s Bay Area will be shut down. Gorman estimated that there are approximately 160 members of Climb who will be impacted by the move. They will have the opportunity to now work out of Coldwell Banker’s various offices in the Bay Area.
Climb was a fascinating brokerage concept. Their brightly decorated, outside garden offices knocked me over. It was also a dedicated mobile-first real estate brokerage geared “towards the next generation of agents and consumers”, with a focus on diversity in agent hiring and inclusion.
But my favorite was the firm’s Air Stream.
Taking inspiration from food trucks and retro-fitting, Climb created a workspace on-the-go in a vintage 1964 AirStream. The team turned it into a mobile office, gave the chrome interiors a sleek new look by buffing them, adding the company logo and a modern racing stripe. Gleaming interiors, white furniture and colorful pops of accessories including flat screens finished out an office on wheels. The company used Twitter to let clients and business associates know where the AirStream would be parked in the city on any given day.
The creative marketing earned the three founders a buy-out from Realogy. In a short span of years, the brokerage grew to over 250 agents working in six offices throughout the Bay Area. The San Francisco Association of Realtors ranked Climb as the #7 brokerage in the city.
The good news is that Climb agents can choose to stay on with Realogy in the more “conventional” Bay area offices.
