Re/Max Cayman Islands has become a household name. Yet, two decades ago, owner and broker Kim Lund (pictured above on right) found it tough to enter the islands’ competitive real estate environment. 

Kim started First Realty of Cayman in 1990 but soon realised it would be difficult, as a one-man organisation, to compete with established companies. So, he decided it was time to join forces with a strong franchise.  

“I knew I needed an edge if I wanted to be successful in this market,” Kim says. “I started contacting every real-estate franchise out there and none were interested.” 

Re/Max had been Kim’s first choice. However, the company had reservations about expanding internationally because the franchise was focusing on developing the brand in North America. So Kim flew to the corporate offices in Denver to meet with the founders of Re/Max, Dave and Gail Liniger. 

He managed to overcome their concerns and, in 1991, Kim started the first Re/Max office outside North America with his late wife, Brenda Tibbetts Lund. The couple hired a receptionist and the first agent, Edna Ebanks, who is still with the company today. From there, the Lunds built their business by gradually adding agents.  

“It has been a very positive growth for us,” Kim says.  

The biggest change for the firm came seven years later, when the Lunds decided to sell half the business to James Bovell, (pictured above on left) who had joined Re/Max as a sales agent in 1994. The Lunds had the option of selling the other half of the business to James a year later. 

Kim was contemplating retiring when the sale was agreed, but when his wife Brenda passed away after a fight with breast cancer, he held on to his half of the business, with James as a partner.  

“I was not as organised as James in terms of setting a structure that would enable Re/Max to grow and to retain and recruit better agents,” Kim says of their early partnership. “So when James came into the business we had grown to a certain level and levelled off. And then he added the new energy, the new organisation and the new structure, which enabled us as a platform to jump forward and grow the business almost exponentially.” 

James waves the compliment away. He credits the new energy at Re/Max to a change of dynamics.  

While the Lunds had used the brand to generate higher sales by giving them access to more clients, James believes his role as an independent partner required a new approach and structure. The business had to be able to succeed on a standalone basis, outside the personal sales of the owners, so Re/Max Cayman Islands needed to provide agents with adequate services and tools, says James. 

To illustrate the change in tactics, he gives the example of Kim being recognised in 1998 and 1999 as the number one salesperson for Re/Max worldwide, which consisted of 80,000 to 90,000 agents at the time. 

“Last year [2010] we were on stage, Kim as a team and me as an individual, to receive an award as a company, for being the largest production as a company, which is more about the group of agents and having more people doing more business,” James says. “This is how the philosophy changed.” 

Although they have different personalities, the strong relationship between the two owners is essential to the success of the firm. 

“Our relationship has been a unique form of partnership. We have never had a difference of opinion,” says James, who is in charge of running the office. “As far as the company goes and how we do things and how we make decisions, it is always mutually agreed.” 

“People in their personal marriages would envy our business marriage, because we don’t argue and we don’t fight,” Kim adds.  

This is evident in the day to day office relations. Despite the competitive environment, employees have to get along.   

“The nice thing is that as much as the [agents] are competing with each other, we are still sharing ideas on how to all improve our business and that’s one of the fundamentals about Re/Max itself, because the goal is to have the best agents with the most experience doing the business,” says James. 

Communication, clear office policies, and exceptionally good support are integral to the success of Re/Max. 

“So it tends to work very well that way,” says Kim. “We have built a powerful office right now that sells hundreds of millions of dollars of real estate.” 

In a time when customers are aware of the value of an agent, quality of service and understanding of the market is imperative.  

The focus on agents differentiates Re/Max from other companies, Kim believes. By advertising the agent and the agent’s direct telephone number, Re/Max empowers the agent as opposed to the company.  

Kim says one of the strongest outside influences on the firm has been the rise of technology.  

“James has been at the cutting edge of that, making sure that if it is anything that can help our agents and our business we will make the investment … That has had a huge impact on this industry and the success that we have had,” Kim explains.  

But technology is not as easy and as cheap as everyone thinks, James adds. A lot of time and learning is involved in exploring what does and does not work.  

“Finding the things that are really beneficial to the business or its customers is time consuming,” he says, adding many technologies are actually a waste of time. 

During the past 20 years, “professionalism has also changed,” says Kim. He believes firms in Cayman have become more professional and agents better trained.  

However, the main change in the real estate industry is sales volume.  

“To sell a million dollar condo 15 or 20 years was virtually unheard of, whereas now it has become a lot more commonplace.” 

Success has not come easy to Re/Max. The company has seen many hard years, from Hurricane Ivan in 2004 to the financial crisis of 2008. 

“You have to evolve as different crises come up and as the world changes,” Kim says. 

After Hurricane Ivan, Re/Max Cayman Islands had to start all over again. The advantage was that the market bounced back in 2005. Unfortunately, the market has yet to recover from the economic crisis of 2008. 

“The last two years here have been financially much more devastating than anything else. Business fell off a cliff basically after September of 2008,” Kim says. 

Sales are slowly improving, James says, adding the local market has always sustained the business when the resort market took a hit. 

“When I came on we were heavily leveraged on the resort market. Part of that was that we were perceived locally as an American or a foreign company as opposed to a local company with a foreign brand,” he says. “And that is one of the biggest misconceptions so we made a distinctive effort to move more into the local market and got agents focused on the local market.” 

In any case, “it is not all about success, success, success”, James continues. 

Community support and involvement are an important part of the Re/Max philosophy. 

“People in our lives have helped us and it comes from the community. So we are very committed to the community of the Cayman Islands and also to protecting Cayman and its place in the global economy, to see that prosper and benefit.”