CataList Homes, a residential real estate brokerage based in Southern California, was founded in 2001 by CEO Hal Ellis and Executive Vice President/Chief Marketing Officer Michael Davin. The privately-owned and operated firm currently has 9 offices throughout Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, and Riverside counties.

History

There is an element of the archetypal everyman in the origins of CataList Homes. The idea behind the company—a low-fee, full-service approach—was the brainchild of Michael Davin, who initially conceived of the original CataList business plan while working as a commercial agent for the Grubb & Ellis real estate comany, a commercial real estate giant throughout much of the 1980s and 1990s. Davin was one of many thousands of employees at Grubb and Ellis and over a two-year span, spent his off-hours methodically planning the foundations of the business model that would later become CataList Homes. In 1999, Davin approached Hal Ellis, the then-CEO of the Grubb and Ellis company, with his completed business plan for CataList Homes. Ellis loved the idea, and quite suddenly, Davin was a new entrant into the relatively young world of alternative real estate brokerage. A successful but anonymous commercial agent who closed multi-million dollar warehouse deals in Studio City, Davin was now about to launch a multi-million dollar real estate brokerage alongside Hal Ellis, a well-respected and renown real estate executive and co-founder of what was then one of the largest commercial real estate companies in the world.

Ellis subsequently approached a former corporate lieutenant, Robert Kirkpatrick, to join the team as Broker and Chief Operating Officer of CataList Homes. At the height of the Internet boom and with the real estate space relatively untouched, Kirkpatrick quickly saw CataList's immense potential and signed on. Shortly thereafter, Ellis and Davin secured funding from influential investors that included Marcus & Millichap and Bain & Co. to launch the company's pilot office in Hermosa Beach, California. With Ellis as their newly-minted CEO, Kirkpatrick handling the sales and operations side and Davin in charge of marketing, CataList Homes was born in 2001.

In its inaugural year, CataList made a relatively quick ascent into one of L.A. county's most competitive residential real estate markets, the South Bay, a collection of mostly coastal cities just minutes south of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), right off the 405 freeway. The company enjoyed immediate success buoyed by a somewhat irreverent 3% total commission marketing campaign that placed residential real estate commissions firmly in its crosshairs. CataList advertisements featured prominent tag lines like "Taking the Fat Out of Real Estate Commissions" and "Fat Free Commissions," a trademark slogan that soon became synonymous with the company's rebellious brand.

CataList's focus on the importance of lowering real estate commissions placed them firmly at odds with a majority of the South Bay Realtor community, most of whom charged the standard 5%-6% total real estate commission to market and sell a home. CataList was also one of the first companies in Southern California to offer free and unfettered access to Multiple Listing Service (MLS) data on its website. These two seemingly benign decisions, to charge a lower commission fee and to give consumers the ability to view homes-for-sale via the web (access included competing properties by outside brokerages, as well as CataList properties-for-sale), proved fateful and placed CataList at the forefront of a bourgeoning movement of alternative real estate business models, not just in Southern California but throughout the country. A pattern emerged as well. The provocative CataList business model stirred a latent hostility among realtors in general and set the stage for a familiar cycle that CataList agents would encounter time and again, whereby CataList would enter a new market, encounter some initial resistance from other realtors, but eventually would establish a solid and consistent market presence.

CataList's rebellious brand, coupled with a marketing approach that was curiously deemed incendiary by some in the realtor community at-large, contributed in large part to the firm being cast in the role of underdog startup company in many early media profiles. One particularly influential feature story by Kevin Cody, the owner and publisher of the Easy Reader, a prominent South Bay newspaper, captured the imagination of many local residents and much of the realtor community with tales of informal "boycotts" of CataList properties and of missed opportunities by both buyers and sellers held captive by disinterested and unscrupulous realtors. The piece was a minor victory for the company, in some ways providing a springboard for later expansion by cementing CataList's place at the table in the South Bay market.

In 2003, CataList expanded into Orange county, followed by another round of expansion in 2005 into other parts of LA county, as well as into Ventura and Riverside counties. Since opening in 2001, CataList Homes has been the the subject of a feature story on the cover of the Los Angeles Times business section and has been mentioned in numerous print and online publications, including Time magazine, Slate.com, Forbes magazine, the Orange County Register, and the Inman News, a popular real estate web portal. In 2006, well-known KNBC-TV reporter David Cruz profiled CataList in a segment on alternative real estate. Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer Michael Davin has been quoted extensively in the Los Angeles Times and was recently a panel member at the National Association of Realtor's annual meeting in Florida. Despite the recent downturn in the real estate market, CataList continues to grow, and talk of a pending expansion throughout California continues to circulate in prominent venture capital circles.

Founding

Founded in 2001 by Hal Ellis and Michael Davin.

Management

Hal Ellis, Chief Executive Officer

Robert Kirkpatrick, President, Chief Operating Officer

Michael Davin, Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer

Further Reading

How Is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents?

Low-priced Brokerage Is Shaking Up Real Estate

Real estate brokerage opens door for FSBO listings

External Links

Inman News

Freakonomics Website