The real estate industry boasts some of the most iconic brands: Re/Max, Berkshire Hathaway and Coldwell Banker to name a few. But how recognizable are those brands’ logos to the general consumer? And does it match real estate professionals’ views of the industry’s branding? That’s what we sought to find out in our latest two surveys.
We quizzed 395 people on their recall of well-known industry brands and followed up with a survey of 36 real estate professionals to get their thoughts on the industry.
Executive summary
When it comes to real estate professionals, they value their brand’s position within the industry. They ranked positioning as the most important branding element of a real estate company’s success, closely followed by user experience on the app or website.
Only 11% of real estate professionals said the logo was the most important branding element for their company’s success.
When it comes to consumers, logos are crucial for brand recognition. The majority of respondents were able to correctly identify top real estate brands like Coldwell Banker, Keller Williams, Berkshire Hathaway and RE/Max by their logo alone. However, some elements of the logo were more identifiable than others:
- 84% of consumers correctly identified Berkshire Hathaway by its font alone.
- 91% of consumers correctly identified Coldwell Banker by its color scheme.
- 90% of consumers correctly identified RE/Max’s imagery (colors and balloons), but without that imagery, only 63% could correctly identify its font.
- 81% of consumers correctly identified Keller Williams by its color scheme.
- Only 30% of consumers could correctly identify Century 21’s current logo due to confusion over a recent rebrand.
Century 21’s recent rebrand didn’t just throw off consumers. The majority (56%) of real estate professionals also did not think the rebrand was successful and expected consumers to be confused. The real estate professionals were also right about how well consumers know and can recognize these top brands: 84% of professionals believed consumers could recognize top real estate brands very well at a glance.
Here are how the top brands ranked in order of most to least recognizable
- Coldwell Banker was the most recognizable brand with 91% correct answers.
- Re/Max was the next most recognized for its trademark at 90%.
- Berkshire Hathaway took the third spot, with 84% of consumers recognizing its font.
- Keller Williams came in fourth, with 81% correctly identifying it by color scheme.
- Century 21 was last due to confusion over the new logo, with only 30% of consumers identifying it correctly.
Breakdown of consumer quiz results
Consumers were presented with several variations of a brand’s logo, font or imagery and asked to identify the correct one. Results are displayed below with a green checkmark identifying the correct answer.
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Breakdown of real estate survey
This survey was distributed to real estate professionals. 45% of respondents identified themselves as realtors or real estate agents, 38% identified themselves as marketing or creative professionals in the real estate industry and 16% had another role in the real estate industry.
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Interested in real estate branding? Learn more from our real estate branding guide or our comprehensive real estate marketing guide.
