Carriene Porter
With two decades of experience as a real estate professional who has brokered six offices and co-owned four brokerages in the Salt Lake Valley, Carriene Porter is the broker/owner of Precision Realty & Associates LLC. Based in Lehi, Utah, and backed by an executive team with a combined 60+ years of experience as former brokerage operators in the Wasatch Front area, Precision serves real estate professionals and their buyers and sellers of residential and commercial properties through dynamic and modern technology platforms.
In 2012, after a career of leading and building successful brokerages, large and small, Carriene broke away from the typical industry model of hiring agents in masses and founded Precision Realty as an independent brokerage built with only Utah’s most accomplished and elite real estate agents. With genuine care for their agents and clients at the heart of everything they do, Precision is dedicated to helping their team reach a higher level of success with innovative marketing, training, sales, and closing practices that foster both superior agent performance and the highest client satisfaction. As Carriene leads a growing firm, she does so with the same passion that has driven her stunning career—and the remarkable success of her agents—for 20 years.
We had the pleasure of speaking with Carriene to find out more about Precision Realty, and her innovative approach that is attracting the “crème de la crème” of agents and keeping happy clients coming back.
How is Precision Realty different from other brokerages?
First, we differ from the standard real estate brokerage that hires agents in masses, hoping the numbers will “play out,” to financially sustain the brokerage. Instead, we’re more selective, hiring only full-time, experienced agents who are seriously looking to reach the next “big” step in their careers. Through teaching, coaching, and training, we focus on the implementation of the training, followed by workshops, mastermind groups and agent mastery coaching, to guarantee successful results.
Second, while we serve clients throughout Utah, our main focus is Salt Lake and Utah Counties. It is extremely important to us that we know our customers and our market. We watch, we discern, and we match our agents and clients to their wants and needs. With the huge influx of people moving to Utah from out of state, they rely on us to provide our insight and knowledge of the geography and communities to help them find the perfect home or commercial property.
Tell us a little bit about your background and what led you to start Precision Realty.
I worked for several years in corporate management and eight years in property management before moving into a real estate career in 2000 as an agent. Four years later, I obtained my broker’s license, and for the next eight years, I co-owned and/or led brokerages across the Salt Lake Valley, including one that I built from just a few agents to a team of 250. I positively love the real estate industry, and I particularly enjoy helping agents reach their greatest potential and providing my clients with an exceptional experience. Throughout my career, I began to see common issues that were going unaddressed by most brokerages that stifled the potential of their agents and left the client experience wanting. Agents are so buried in admin tasks that they have little time to focus on their clients, and as a result, clients can feel lost or abandoned during what should be a positive experience. My greatest pleasure is seeing others reach their goals, and I founded Precision to fix these issues so that both agents and clients can thrive.
Tell us about your unique Proprietary Company System that solves these problems for your agents and how they benefit from it.
For agents, one of the biggest problems in creating a sustainable real estate career is the lack of follow-through and relationship building between agents and their clients. Most agents get so caught up in the “middle” of working on the transaction at hand that they can’t keep up with past clients or future leads. This lack of training and support to create an effective time management system is all too common, and the agent is left looking for new business at the end of every month. Our Proprietary Company System supports transaction solutions, allowing our agents to be the rainmaker of their own business while we provide a follow-up system, managed in-house with hired staff, through our CRM for each agent and their secure SOI fostering repeat/referral business.
It’s like the perfect assistant to the CEO. We also have an in-house transaction coordinator provided for our agents, who works with our agents to keep them informed of every step of the process so that our clients don’t feel lost or abandoned, and know what’s going on at any given moment. With these systems, our agents positively shine. It allows them to truly enjoy the best part of their jobs—working with their clients and building their businesses.
Your training model is also unique. What makes it different from others, and how does it help your agents reach that “next level” of success?
Most brokerages offer training. The difference between what we offer and what others offer is that we focus on the implementation of training. Our agents are serious about their careers, committed, and driven to get to that next level of their business. With that in mind, we offer mastermind groups, agent mastery coaching, and implementation workshops so that they can apply everything that they’ve been taught to real-world scenarios. It’s the practical application of this knowledge that makes the difference. Through role-playing of actual situations that they’ve encountered with their clients, I teach my agents what they should or should not do, what they missed, or provide negotiating tips, so they understand the whole concept and can apply it to a situation they’re facing right now. I build really close relationships with my agents. I want to know them individually and help them succeed both personally and professionally.
As a result of both our training and our proprietary systems and support, our agents are getting to that next level that’s eluded them in their careers.
You also implemented unique systems to solve the most common problems that home buyers and sellers experience. Tell us about these and how your clients are benefitting from them.
Throughout my career, when new clients would come to me, I’d hear time and again that their previous agent or broker didn’t make sure they fully understood the process, and as a result, they felt lost and it was a stressful experience, or they were left on their own after they purchased their home. Our mission is to give them a positive and memorable experience, with continual knowledge, communication, and professionalism, and to foster our relationship with them for years to come. This is one of the reasons so many of our clients come back to us time and again, and also why they refer their friends and family to us.
What is on the horizon for Precision Realty?
This is an exciting time for us. We’ll be opening a property management division within the company to support our investor clientele. We’re not looking to build a brokerage of hundreds of agents, rather a small boutique brokerage of the best and brightest who support one another and share their personal expertise in the industry, encouraging a diverse, safe, and open yet tight-knit Precision community.
Let’s end with a personal question. What do you enjoy most about your work?
I love helping people see their potential. I love it. Whether it’s a client or an agent, I love helping people step into their greatness and see who they really are, because who they are is really beautiful. People have more knowledge, and more talent, and more heart than they often realize. When people know they have someone on their side, they start reaching that potential.
Carriene Porter
Broker/Owner, ABR, AHWD, PSA, RENE, SRS, SRES Lehi, Utah
www.UtahHomeSellingTeam.com