Call It Closed International Realty expands to U.K.

04/12/2024

With an eye on U.S. vacation-home buyers from abroad, a fast-growing, national cloud-based real estate brokerage with Florida roots is headed across the pond to England.

Call It Closed International Realty is the first and only international, cloud-based, 100% commission brokerage with a multi-tiered revenue sharing platform. The Naples-based company currently operates in 18 states, including California, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New York and Texas.

The new London location will provide prospective British buyers access to a robust network of several hundred Call It Closed agents and brokers across the country, said Chad Osborne, the company’s CEO and, with his wife Aprile, co-founder.

“The U.S. and U.K. real estate markets operate quite differently, but one thing is clear: unlike the large brokerages, our entrepreneurial model gives agents a greater opportunity to succeed,” Osborne said. “And when agents are freed from paying hefty franchise fees and higher commissions, those savings invariably benefit the buyers and sellers whom they represent.”

Among the key differences:

  • British real estate professionals (known as estate agents) rely on salaries (and modest bonuses) rather than commissions for the bulk of their income;
  • With no licensing standards for those agents, there is little barrier for entry into the U.K. profession – but compared to the U.S., those opportunities are more limited;
  • Unlike in the U.S., there are no Multiple Listing Services (MLS) databases that allow competing agents to share listings. Instead, each British agency maintains its own individual databases;
  • In England, agents typically only represent the seller, not the buyer. Their employers control the customer relationship, with no individual marketing or branding as is common in the U.S.

Call It Closed’s U.K. office will be overseen by another husband-and-wife team, Steve Tasker and his spouse Kelly Owbridge-Tasker, a commercial property manager and healthcare executive with more than 30 years of experience.

“The new partnership with Call It Closed International Realty is truly a game-changer,” said Kelly Owbridge-Tasker. “British buyers will have access to a nationwide network of U.S. brokers freed from the constraints of an outdated business model that primarily benefitted large brokerages. And the agents who represent those buyers will have their own opportunity to benefit from the more entrepreneurial model that is the U.S. real estate market.”

Call It Closed’s London launch follows a recent expansion to the Pacific Northwest, where the cloud-based brokerage opened affiliates in Oregon and Washington earlier this month.

The Osbornes founded Call It Closed in 2019, growing the company from its Florida roots to one that now operates in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, New York, Virginia and Washington. The couple previously founded several successful RE/MAX franchises in Florida.

“For many, becoming an entrepreneur is the epitome of the American dream,” Chad Osborne said. “We’re thrilled to bring a taste of that entrepreneurial spirit to Great Britain and look forward to helping prospective buyers as well as estate agents in pursuit of their own slice of paradise.”