Choosing a creative business name for your new real estate business is probably one of the more enjoyable tasks when setting up a new venture.

But it can also be daunting.

What happens if you screw up? You’re stuck with it, right?

Take time when choosing your name. It is extremely important, and extremely hard to change later when you’ve already created a website, signs, set up your email, and established a personal brand surrounding your name.

Don’t believe me about the importance of choosing the right business name, or how hard it is to change? Just ask IHOP.

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How Many Names?

When choosing a name, it is important to first consider which name you are choosing. You could have separate names for the following:

• Your company
• Your brand
• Your website
• Your brokerage
• Your name
• Your assumed name

For example, Rupert Murdoch owns Fox, which owns Move.com, which owns Realtor.com. That is a businessman’s name, a company name, and a brand/product name.

You’ll want to decide how you want to organize your realty company and brand early. There may be reasons to have a different names for different functions (Example 1), or you can try to stick to the same name and matching URL for all your branded assets (Example 2).

Name	Example 1	Example 2
Company	Wayne Enterprises	Batman Inc.
Brand	Team Justice League	Batman
Website	BatmanBlogsAboutBuildings.com	Batman.com
Brokerage	Sothebys	Batman Brokerage
Name	Bruce Wayne	Bruce Wayne
Assumed Name	Batman	Batman

As Realtors, we don’t have finances or night lives quite as complex as Mr. Wayne, but it is still not uncommon to have separate names.

For this article, we are focusing on your brand name, which might be your team name, brokerage name, or just website name.

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Brainstorming

Your Name or Not Your Name?

Neil Patel is an interesting guy to follow if you are into SEO. He also wrote a very interesting blog post about why he regrets personally branding his company with his own name.

The vast majority of agents simply use their name. “The Adams Group”, or “Brian Adams Team”. That seems to work just fine. If you are a force of personality and you are the business, not just the business owner, using your name is probably the right way to go.

But there are some drawbacks to consider when using your own name.

Firstly, it ties you irredeemably to the business. If you ever envision taking a step back from real estate, or letting someone else run your show, or even selling your business altogether, having the entire business branded under your name can be a challenge.

Plus, if you grow to say, 200+ deals a year, it is highly unlikely you will be personally working with every buyer and seller. And yet, anyone working with “The Brian Adams Team” might be a little peeved that “Brian Adams” himself is not their agent.

Branding your business neutrally, e.g. “The Inspired Team”, can overcome those issues. You’re not promising yourself. And you are instead emphasizing your team. Even if you are a single agent and not a team, you can brand yourself apart from your name. My website is “The Hood Homes Blog”, not “Brian E Adams”.

Real Estate Name Generators

This real estate name generator is from Anade.

FitSmallBusiness also has a business name generator. They pop out ideas based on your market location, core value, or niche to brainstorm some ideas.

Branding Companies

There are plenty of branding companies out there.

You can hire them take you through the branding process, including your logos, colors, website graphics, and more.

1000Watt is real estate industry branding company of experts and a worthwhile company to check out. They have high end paid branding services like marketing and logo design, but also a catalog of their customers to browse and consider what is possible.

Another is Fiverr, where you can actually pay to get real estate name suggestions. You can also then use it to outsource the rest of your branding services.

Keywords

If you are starting in real estate, begin by writing your mission statement. What values does your organization represent? You can use your mission to brainstorm real estate company name ideas: Integrity, Trust, Friendly, etc.

How about synonyms for a home? Villa, pad, hearth, manor, casa, domicile, digs, roost, nest, manse, abode, haunt.

Ok, maybe not “haunt”.

Some other keywords to play with and mix around:

Local Area Nicknames and Words

Does your area have a nickname? For example, how about Weird Homes Austin? Temple, TX has a city slogan called Choose Temple, so why not Choose Temple Homes?

A geographical location can inspire some great names like Grand Canyon Realty, Red River Homes, Skyline Mountain Group, etc.

Examples of Great Names from Top Producers

I like going to Real Trends’ list of teams and brokers for ideas. Below is a list of real estate teams and brokerages, the top-performing teams in the country! Surely they are doing something right. I left off of the list companies named after the team lead.

The people bringing in big dough probably are doing a few things right, and probably are the folks making enough to have spent a little on branding.

A few more real estate agencies with solid names.

If your name is “Jay Day”, it would be almost a crime not to brand your business with your name.

“Wilco” is the affectionate name for Williamson County, Texas, where this team is located, and “Best of Wilco” is a fantastic name for a local brand and business name.

A good real estate investor name, emphasizing both location and a core value: “Trust”. The hyphen in their URL is not ideal, but otherwise, great work.

1152 Realty is a unique name that probably has an available URL. The only thing missing is an explanation on their site as to what 1152 means! Be sure to explain to your customers why you chose the name you did!

AI Business Name Idea Generation

Consider using ChatGPT to spit out some effective ideas for your business custom tailored to your mission statement.

I fed an example mission statement from Chantel Ray Real Estate to ChatGPT to see what names it might recommend for my hypothetical business. Not bad! Though it seems a little obsessed with alliteration.

Don’t have a mission? You should do that before coming up with a business name, anyway! Here are some example mission statements from other brokers.

My Favorite Name is Already Taken!

That may not matter. There is no rule that two businesses can’t have the same name.

If the other business is already a major competitor in your market, then maybe you should look elsewhere to distinguish yourself. You are going to have a hard time making your brand catch on if they already have an established identity behind that brand.

Alternatively, you can take the name and change it up just a little. “Delightful Realty” already taken? How about “Delightful Homes” or something?

It may matter when it comes to choosing your domain name, which we will talk about shortly.

Naming Mistakes to Avoid

You’ll find it may be difficult to avoid all the problems below with your name. But try to avoid as many of these challenges as possible. The easier it is for the consumer to remember, spell, and search your brand, the quicker it will achieve top of mind awareness.

Long Names

Real estate breaks these rules more often than, say, a Silicon Valley tech startup name (you probably aren’t going to name your company “Spoo” or “Fome”).

But “The Saint Petersburg McLaughlin Home Selling Team” is just too much.

Try to keep it under 15 characters. Under 10 is even better.

One reason to keep it short is your future email. Even mine is long, at [email protected]. Shorter is better.

Hard to Spell Names

Entrepreneur Realty is an okay name. The real problem is spelling “entrepreneur”. I don’t even bother trying unless spell check is handy.

It may not seem like a big deal, but it will be when folks are trying to email you at [email protected] and you never get the message.

This doesn’t have to just apply to difficult words, but words and names with multiple spellings. Li Realty or Lee Realty? Is it Brian with an “i” or a “y”? These words are called homophones – words that sound the same but are spelled differently. Here is a list of homophones! Avoid these words!

The opposite are homographs, words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently. You probably want to avoid these, too, as it may create confusion as to how to pronounce your business name.

Hard to Pronounce Names

If you stay away from hard to spell words, you hopefully are steering clear from hard to pronounce words.

You want a name that is easy to remember.

Where this is most important is with agents using their own names. My uncle is Persian, and his name is Ghaemmaghami. I’ve learned how to pronounce it, and when you look at the whole name, it actually is easier than it looks for an Anglo-American. But still, Ghaemmaghami Realty probably would be a poor name choice (though the domain is available!).

Say your business name ideas aloud. Does it roll off the tongue? Does it evoke a particular image? Does it sound like you are saying something else?

Bad Acronyms

If your name is a few words long, check the acronym really quick. Make sure you haven’t accidentally spelled a naughty word or anything else that is going to cause you branding headaches down the road.

If you don’t have a dirty mind, perhaps share your name ideas with some friends who do. Everyone has that friend. Let them troubleshoot your name for any problems before you invest into your branding.

And avoid acronyms in general. It might be tempting when your favorite name is taken to abbreviate from Legacy Real Estate Team to the Legacy RE Team. But it can be difficult to hear the difference between “B” and “E” on the phone, as well as half the other letters of the alphabet. Unless you do like in my military market and talk in the NATO phonetic alphabet.

Irregular Spelling

My own brokerage makes this mistake – “StarPointe Realty” – I am always clarifying “StarPointe with an ‘e’. Like hard-to-spell names, deliberately misspelling a common word can simply be a source of confusion and misdirection.

Scottsdale Houzzes may sound cute, but just don’t do it.

A famous exception to this rule is Google itself, based on the word googol, but they wisely decided Google was a better brand name.

Ordinal Numbers

First Realty Iowa is a pretty good name. Or is it 1st? Do they spell it out in your email? Get used to having to explain that every time.

It’s probably best to avoid numbers in your name to avoid that confusion.

Keyword Stuffing

You want a website that can rank for the keywords “tampa bay homes for sale”, which is searched approximately 480 times every month. So – your new name is – Tampa Bay Homes For Sale Team!

I’ve got bad news for you. That ain’t gonna do you any good.

Long gone are the days that Google’s search engine cared much for what is in your URL. In fact, search “tampa bay homes for sale”. Not a single result as of this writing even has the words “tampa bay”. Only three results have any of those keywords in the URL: point2homes.com, coldwellbankerhomes.com, and homes.com.

As best I can tell, tampabayhomesforsale.com is a defunct website that gets 0 organic hits from Google every month.

Meaningless Names

It is your business. Your name should mean something not only to your potential client. It should mean something to you.

You should be excited about your name. Maybe it means something personal to you. Maybe there is a backstory to how you came up with the name. That can be a great reason to pick a name. Share your backstory on your website. Make it part of your mission statement.

Ensuring you have a strong personal and emotional connection to your business is important to keeping you passionate.

Forgetting to Test Your Name

Before launching, test your name. Post it in real estate facebook groups for some friendly feedback (though it might be worthwhile to grab the URL first, in case other agents like it a little too much).

Google the name. Does someone already have something similar? Does anything else unrelated to the name come up? What might your future buyers and sellers run into while trying to find your business online? Also search the name on Facebook.

You’ll probably have a few people with a similar name. There are 1.4M Realtors, after all. But the goal is to make sure your new brand won’t be confused with anything unsavory like a porn site, a famous serial killer, or some sexual slang.

In my case, it is even more innocuous. I am careful not to brand under my own name, e.g. the Brian Adams Team, because there is some Canadian singer who regularly is in the top results of Google.

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Your URL

Choosing a short, memorable name is important because of your URL. When starting your website, you will almost surely want to use your team or brand name. You want folks to easily type your address into the search bar and quickly get to your site with as few opportunities for spelling errors as possible.

Even if you aren’t ready for a website yet, check the domain availability for your real estate name. And then, go ahead and buy it!

I do recommend buying the URL even without a website because it is relatively inexpensive and you can use it for whatever website solution you use in the future. It is yours. That is important when protecting your brand.

But what if your name URL is already taken?

Don’t Settle for .org, .net, .realtor, etc.

These look tempting, but there has been demonstrated prejudice from Google against these top level domains. And most people will assume your address is .com. Don’t confuse them!

It is possible to buy the URL if someone else already owns it. You can submit a request to do so through GoDaddy. But realistically, it is probably time to think of an alternative.

I did this. I wanted www.HoodHomes.com (and still want it!), but it was taken, so I settled for www.HoodHomesBlog.com. I probably shouldn’t have, as “Blog” does not usually describe a real estate company and I think has hurt some of my traffic and conversions. But I’ve since embraced it and made it work just fine!

If your URL is taken, try changing something here or there to make it available. “Top Shelf Realty” is taken. The current owner isn’t using it, but is asking for $3500 (called domain flipping). Maybe you have that kind of cash and are at a place where it would be worthwhile to you. But probably not.

Instead, Top Shelf Housing is available, saving you $3500.

If absolutley desperate, this a a breakable rule. In fact, even trillion dollar businesses sometimes have to settle for second best. Facebook, er, Meta, launched Threads not at threads.com (a workplace tool that on its homepage discloses that it is not associated with FAcebook) but threads.net

One note. Don’t use numbers or hyphens in your URL.

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Obey the Rules

Your State likely has rules regarding names. Obey them!

Texas, for example, has rules regarding team names (rules I disagree with and I think are the result of legacy brokers trying to make it difficult for the surging team and flat fee models to thrive, but that is a digression).

Texas’s rules include:

• The team name cannot be an assumed business name of the broker
• Team name must end with “Team” or “Group”
• Cannot imply that the team is separate from the broker

In Texas, a “brand” name isn’t recognized. Instead, it follows the rules for team names, even if you are a single agent. If you aren’t using your name or assumed name as your brand, then you need to follow the rules for team names.

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Real Estate Investors

Investors have slightly different challenges than real estate agents. Investors often do not want their personality involved at all, and thus are best advised to steer clear of including their own name in their business name.

The general public is also more skeptical of real estate investing and investors, which means that emphasizing the qualities of your company that might earn homeowners’ trust is more important.

Including core values in your name is a common best practices for investors.

Conclusion

Choosing a creative business name for real estate should not be done on a whim. It is one of the most integral components of your real estate business plan, and difficult to change later.

Put some thought and effort into it. Test it. Check the URL (and buy it). Get feedback from friends, family, and social media. And then start building your business!

Updated March 31, 2024; Originally published June 17th, 2018