Inside Third and Bond: Week 138

We’re always brainstorming about bonuses and incentives in this market to try to excite the brokerage community about Third + Bond. Thus, a few weeks back we hosted the weekly sales meeting for Corcoran’s Brooklyn Heights office. This is the office from which our lead brokers, Jim and Leslie, hail. (Incidentally, it is also the office across the street from the trash can where the pretty Russian spy dropped her newly purchased phone charger and receipt that the FBI picked up as they followed her. We saw it on Dateline!) The weekly sales meetings are theoretically mandatory but we’ve heard that sometimes seasoned brokers skip, especially in the glory days of summer vacation. We were glad then to have about 45 brokers attend, munch our sandwiches, tour the project, and fit in the sales office meeting agenda.

We stole a few minutes from that agenda to announce bonus incentives for Corcoran brokers bringing in contracts from that day forward. One contract gets a Corcoran broker an iPad. Two contracts gets a Corcoran broker an iPad and an iBook laptop. Three contracts gets a Corcoran broker an iPad, an iBook laptop, and an iMac desktop. Think you know where this is going? When we started announcing the incentives, we got a little carried away and said, for the fourth deal, a Toyota Prius. Nobody (ourselves included) could tell if we were joking or not about this fourth incentive, but after thinking about it, we realized it was probably a fantastic incentive that we really could afford if a broker was responsible for four deals (almost 10% of the entire project).

So, four contracts gets a Corcoran broker an iPad, an iBook laptop, an iMac desktop, and… a Toyota Prius. If Apple made a car with good gas mileage, then we would have continued to buoy its stock in our incentive pyramid.

The idea behind the incentives is that a cherry on top of the commission is attractive enough to get brokers to visit sooner and more often with or without clients. As for the cost of the incentives to us, say that 8 or so brokers bring in 4 contracts each, that would pretty much sell out the project and we’d have to pay out around $120,000 in bonus gifts. The value of getting those contracts in place and closed is worth at least as much to us in terms of paying down our loan quickly and limiting interest due.

Cut to the day following the announcement, we got an offer on one of the units. We asked Jim & Leslie all the key questions, which unit, how much, etc. Last question. Is this a co-broke? Actually, it’s a Corcoran broker. Note to self, sell TB, buy Apple stock.

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Our legal fine print: The complete offering terms are in an Offering Plan available from Sponsor. File No. CD080490. Sponsor: Hudson Third LLC, 826 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.