Armando Diaz came to the U.S. from Cuba via the Pedro Pan program in 1962 and was sent to Indianapolis, where he worked in a real estate company owned by his foster parents. After graduating from Indiana University, he opened his own firm. In 1991, he moved to Miami with his late wife, Mary Lou Payne.

After moving to Miami he co-founded and co-owned Ocean View Int’l Realty and is a former director of the Miami-Dade Board of Realtors. After splitting from his ex wife/business partner in 2008, he joined forces with Eduardo San Roman, president and CEO of First Service Realty, a 30-year-old firm.

Diaz serves as First Service Realty’s chief operating officer. The firm is a member of Brookfield Residential Property Services, which owns 2,800 locations in all 50 U.S. states, Canada, Mexico and Portugal and has 80,000 agents.

Diaz reflected on his real estate career and the market in a Digital Debrief.

Q: Your model for real estate sales is somewhat different from traditional brokerages. Can you explain how it works?

Traditional brokerages are structured around big offices. In ours, the emphasis is placed on the agent. Our agents receive very high commissions, plus tremendous support that features innovative training programs, free print and on-line advertising, and an industry-leading suite of tools and systems designed with only one objective, and that is to ensure our and agents’ sales success.

We also have all our offices equipped with the latest technology, creating an environment that is great to work in and meet clients.

Q: How did you come up with this system? Are there other firms that use similar systems?

When I arrived in Miami, I wanted to do something different. One of my hobbies is to read business books, and I read somewhere that sometimes to be successful, you don’t have to invent a new product, but instead you can make an existing product better. So I studied some traditional real estate brokerage models and also studied some high commission real estate companies. The high commission offices were not offering sales support. So I came up with a hybrid that combined the best elements of these systems, and offered high commissions and great support.

When I first implemented this model, at Ocean View Int’l. Realty, the company grew from having three agents working out of a 250-square-foot office to 1,600 agents and 18 offices covering Miami-Dade, Broward, and Monroe counties.”

There are some local companies that have structures that are similar to ours, but to my knowledge, no one uses the same (identical) system that has made us so successful. Only two people know the real formula: Eddie and myself. And we keep it like the Coca-Cola formula, very secret.

Q: How is this system better for the brokerage firm than a traditional brokerage system? How could it be less productive or riskier?

Our model is better than traditional brokerages because we keep our overhead low, which enables us to pay our agents a high commission split, attracting more production. This model is also less riskier than traditional because the overhead is low.

Q: How is this system better for the individual broker / Realtor than a traditional system? How is it more difficult?

As I have said, the agent is better off because they are getting paid higher commissions and getting the support and tools needed to be a success. We pays for the agents’ advertising in newspapers, for instance. How can an agent be successful if their company does not promote their inventory?