My plans for my business.

Mr Green is going to come off the highstreet entirely.  It will be a local estate agency that sells property up to £500k  for fixed fees.  £1750 + vat for property below £250k and £2995 + vat for property above.

I'll then have Mr Green 'Premier' (name not decided) that will do property between £500k and £1,000,000.  It will be more of a bespoke service and the fee will be dependant on plan and approach.  Still remaining local.  

I'm then going to start another brand called 'Henry William' (my two middle names), that deals with property over £1,000,000 and with a much wider area that is covered (possibly national).  The speciality for this brand will be very, very low volume.  Likely 3-5 properties at any one time.  More like this type of thing www.saturnhouse.co.uk and www.westendhouse.info

I want to build Mr Green as a really decent, friendly agent that is really good.  No nonsense etc.

Henry William I want to use to push boundaries of what is currently being done in estate agency.  

What do think?  Are two brands necessary?

No.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, you are already pushing boundaries. You already, on the face of it, go the extra mile on behalf of your clients.

Marketing their properties on individual sites is genius. I know they do it in the States already but that approach to selling houses, making it personal again, making the process less painful, taking the bolloc*s out of selling houses, making it more than 'I'll upload your property to Right Move then we'll cross our fingers and charge you 3%'.

The more estate agents that follow that lead the more they'll take the crap out of the industry and fill estate agents with staff who are genuinely passionate about the houses they sell and put the extra effort it rather than the meagre offerings we have currently on the high street.

And now I shall get off my soapbox :)

My problem at the moment is that the higher end houses are actually alienating my core customers.  Quick example:

My mum recommended me to her neighbours daughter.  They're struggling to sell their property.  My mum saw her two weeks later and asked how she was getting on with their sale "badly" was her response.  She asked if she'd seen my site and the response was that she thought we sell too high end property to sell hers.  (I've sold £24k garages, £125k flats etc.)

I think it's clear that you can't be all things to all people.  

I would keep the one brand. The name isn't really a big problem.

I'd just rework your website to seperate the more 'ordinary' properties to your 'I've got big bucks' properties. Write copy tailored for both markets. 'Specialist Homes'?

I think name changes and things are just drastic measures people take when their marketing is rubbish to find in 6 months time they are at the same problem.

My thoughts are more on keeping it simple.  I can get high end properties to sell in low volumes.  I don't need to specifically advertise the Henry William business, it's more creating a brand to enable me to take properties on from an avenue that I currently can't. 

Driving an hour and a half for a property over £1,000,000 is viable.  Doing it for lower end stuff isn't.

Location needs to be local for Mr Green where the other business won't be local.

Trying to differentiate to that degree with one brand is, in my mind, impossible.  

From my experince two brands complicated things. I started with "Excel Expert" and spun off "I Love Spreadsheets" as a second brand.

What that meant in real terms was doubling my marketing needs, resulting in my limited funds and time being spread between the two brands. So both brands ended up suffereing as a result.

I Love Spreadsheets has now become a tag line of Excel Expert to simplify my marketing.

But that is just my experience, maybe you have the funds and resources to cope with two brands or more

Both brands will work under the same structure.  My job won't actually change that much.  

Is very straightforward to do.  Especially as I'll limit the Henry William brand to very few properties.

Middle and low end property all under one roof.  Stuff over £1,000,000 different brand.  

I can understand why you'd think the separation of '£1mill+ homes' is needed away from the Mr Green brand but I'm really not sure it is essential.
I see it as 3 different packages but one overall marketing effort. Top, middle and bottom end.

I can't help thinking that separating out and creating a new brand identity for the 'Henry William' side of things will mean you'll then need to start from scratch to a degree with the marketing on this. You'll be split and stretched as will your marketing budget over the two sites and businesses

But as Dave said you know this market better than I do.
 

It depends on resource.

Two brands can be good if you have the resource. Otherwise, two websites, two business cards, two mobile phones or how will you answer to distinguish customers and so on.

I am a strong believer in separate brands, but only if there is a very strong business reason and the resource to back it up. Otherwise, Mr Green is an excellent name and maybe a rework of the website and marketing messages acheive the same thing?

I'd stay with the one brand but show a 'premier' division. That way people will see you do all, and know that you know how to differentiate between the standard and high-end stuff.

I run a number of brands to tackle different markets but at the end of the day I'm selling people domesticallly and internationally.

In your position selling houses regionally and nationally I'd stick to one brand but differentiate it by service levels.

If there are no differences in service levels why charge different fees? 

palmer snell have:

palmer snell for ordinary houses

palmer snell fine and country homes for higher end houses

same brand, same name, you just know where to look depending on your requirement

simple