Exclusive: @properties Plants Third Franchise in Dallas, to Office in the Braniff Building

One of the largest independent brokerages in the nation, Chicago-based  @properties, which utilizes prop-tech, launched its third national franchise in the Dallas-Fort Worth area this week by partnering with one of the most significant real estate-centric families in town: Dallas Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones.

Jerry Mooty is the nephew of Jerry Jones and a major real estate player, developer, and entrepreneur himself. A lawyer by training, Mooty was most recently a strategy director at Rogers Healy and Associates where he developed a strong sales team. Mooty will be building the Dallas franchise from scratch.

From Law to Luxury Real Estate

Mooty co-founded the law firm McCathern Mooty LLP and served as its managing partner for 14 years. In 2014, he and the Jones family launched Blue Star Payments, a financial services firm focused on credit card processing with the Cowboys brand, which was acquired by private equity investors in 2017.

In an exclusive interview, Mooty told me the franchise firm will be called @properties Dallas and will be headquartered in the Braniff Building at Love Field.

“It’s 360 degrees of glass, with great proximity to both Love Field and the Park Cities,” said Mooty. “And the building is owned by the Jones family in a JV with Mehrdad Moayedi”

So I had to ask: what is unique about @properties, besides the cool, high-tech name and origins in the city of my birth?

Mooty will build his Dallas franchise around luxury homes and new construction developments: @properties has already nabbed one high-rise and one luxury vacation home community in Tyler as clients.

Mooty became acquainted with @properties through the high-rise condo tower planned for Highland Park. The developer introduced him to the Chicago firm last fall, telling Mooty he just wasn’t impressed with the marketing plans local brokerages were offering.

“He said, ‘I wish we could bring in this Chicago company that just blows them all out of the water,’ ” says Mooty. “So last fall he made the introductions.”

Mooty flew to Chicago where he was truly blown away. “I felt like I was walking into a Restoration Hardware. Everything felt right. And I have poked my nose into every brokerage in this town.”

Giving Agents The Wheel

@properties, says Mooty, was built from the ground up by two real estate agents in 2000 to support agents.

The firm was founded on prop-tech designed to put agents back in the driver’s seat in an era of industry disruption. The company also has both mortgage and closing services joint ventures, which are integrated into the platform.

The firm is high on technology as well as a back-end academy that provides training and support. The heart of the system is the proprietary platform, from which an agent can work their entire day.

“Agents can log into their property folders marketplace and all the materials are there, even social media,” says Mooty. “Basically you never have to leave the technology.”

Which sounds a little Compass-esque.

“I don’t think Compass offers this level of support,” says Mooty.

Commission splits are competitive, says Mooty, but @properties places tremendous value on education and technology and helping agents keep up.

In a nutshell, agents price homes based on a Comparative Market Analysis, or CMA, an evaluative tool that compares properties based on a multitude of factors like location, property features, market times, and price changes. Most MLS’s have CMA’s for agent members, but they are antiquated, @properties co-founder Tad Wong told Inman News.

“[The MLS CMA] is what almost every single listing agent uses,” Wong explained. “So when every single agent goes on a listing presentation, their CMA is formatted in the exact same way.”

“And they’re just bad,” he added. “The tools that the MLS provide should be market-leading but they’re not — they’re market-failing. Unless you build it yourself or find a market solution, you’re not going to get a very good product.”

Improving The MLS UX

Wong and co-founder/CEO Mike Golden built an IT arm, hired engineers and coders to develop software to ease the burden of back-end systems on the brokers. Expensive, yes, but Wong wanted to be able to make customization modifications quickly, which you can do when it’s your mousetrap. @properties, says Mooty, is one of the largest independent brokerages in the nation: Dallas is the firm’s third franchise, after Chicago and Atlanta.

Rather than grow the brokerage through expansion, the principles decided franchising better maintains regional culture and control under the @propeties plug-and-play technology platform, marketing, coaching and training.

Mooty, who has been recruiting for six months, says his uncle Jerry will offer support and also use @properties to leverage the Dallas Cowboys presence in real estate. A Frisco office is in the future.

“If I were an agent, I’d want to be at one of the few locally owned brokerages, building a culture around the local feel with the full back-end and office support hired and in place,” Mooty said. “The chance to pair strong local ownership with a technology-driven solution for agents, buyers, and sellers is a big opportunity in Dallas real estate, and what drew me to @properties.”

Mooty is recruiting top luxury agents to join his franchise firm, and will shortly announce the half-dozen or so founding agents who have already signed on the dotted at @properties.

Stay tuned …