21st Century real estate markets
The Century 21 Real Estate company was founded by Art Bartlett and Marsh Fisher in California in 1971. The pair took their company public in 1977, in an effort to expand and franchise across the USA. It was eventually purchased through a buyout orchestrated by The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in 1984. Like a lot of other companies of the 1980s, Century 21 Real Estate was the mark of big financial companies looking to expand their product lines to customers.
Eventually, Century 21 Real Estate was acquired by the conglomerate HFS, a company that had varied interests in other franchised companies. HFS merged with Cendant, and spun off all of their real estate companies under the trade name Realogy. Century 21 Real Estate joined Coldwell Banker and ERA under Realogy, and currently is involved in one out of every four residential real estate transactions in the USA.
Worldwide, Century 21 Real Estate has over eight thousand offices and more than 140,000 independent agents, in more than 40 countries. Century 21 Real Estate is represented in every major city with at least one office and has a presence in all 50 states.
Each office is independently owned by the real estate agent, whom is licensed by their department of state to sell real estate. The job of the Century 21 Real Estate home office is to provide support services in the form of the MLS, as well as training materials and sales materials to help bring buyer and seller together.
The advanced technology and state-of-the art system the Century 21 Real Estate corporate office uses to bring buyer and seller together through use of their website makes the global challenge of buying or selling property much simpler than it did nearly 40 years ago when the Century 21 Real Estate company began.
Although every office is independently owned and operated, the Century 21 Real Estate corporate office has the right to terminate a franchisee if they should be involved in illegal activities or break the franchise agreement. This added protection for the consumer means that you have the backing of the corporate offices of Century 21 Real Estate.
The corporate offices are located in Parsippany, NJ in the United States. In a recent press release, Century 21 Real Estate has informed they added over 1500 new agents and 11 offices last quarter. Even though it appears the housing and real estate market is on an economic downturn, this increase in business tends to argue otherwise. A further release has indicated the Albanian and Hispanic markets are expanded with Century 21 Real Estate offices.