Corcoran’s Brian Daley Knows Relo
Corcoran’s Director of Relocation shares his thoughts on two decades of big moves — and why the Corcoran brand transcends all borders.
Nobody knows the lay of the land quite like Brian Daley. Through his 20+ years in real estate, the geography major-turned-relo maestro has proudly visited every U.S. state and 18 countries. He’s had a front-row seat to Corcoran’s growing presence around the world, having watched the company expand from its New York City roots to the Hamptons and South Florida and, in 2019, helping start the now international Corcoran affiliate network. We sat down with Brian to talk shop about his journey, his department, and what’s next.
In your world, getting people from here to there is all in a day’s work. Give us the 10,000-foot view on what your team does.
Our team does a couple of different things. Part of our business is what most people think of when they hear “relocation,” which is that we partner with third-party companies when a corporation is doing employer-sponsored moves. We provide real estate assistance to the employees who are relocating, and we assign them a Corcoran agent to help them find a home in New York or Florida or wherever they’re being relocated. That’s about 20% of what we do. However, most of our business is broker-to-broker referrals. When Corcoran agents have clients who are moving — not necessarily because of work, but also for personal reasons — our agents come to us for our network so we can help match their client with an agent to either help buy in their new city or to find a seller’s agent for the current house. We even help with rentals sometimes.
Sounds a bit like matchmaking. Tell us about the process.
We ask our referring agent what the client is looking for, where they’re looking, their budget, and any personality traits that are important to know about. We get all that information and that’s where the matchmaking process begins. Sometimes people get annoyed with all our questions, but we ask for a lot of information so that we can match them with the right agent on the other end. The industry average for conversion rates from referral to sales is about 25%, but ours is closer to 50% because we put in that extra effort to make the right match. In 2023, we had 606 placed referrals and 301 closed referrals. On average, we do between 600 to 700 broker-to-broker referrals a year.
Corcoran’s reach today is a lot wider than when you started in 2004. How has that changed your job?
It’s been crazy seeing how much we’ve grown. The affiliate business has been amazing for us. Now when we’re referring out with our agents, we can say it will be a Corcoran agent on the other end. It’s easier for our agents to promote to their spheres of influence and say, “I’m referring you to this area, where there will be a Corcoran agent to help you.” It’s nice to have that brand recognition. Two years ago, I went skiing with my family in Italy. When we drove into the town of Garda there was this huge billboard that said, “Welcoming Corcoran to Italy.” It was pretty amazing to see. Just seeing these Corcoran offices pop up in all these places is really exciting.
How has the Corcoran brand’s value proposition translated throughout these new and different markets?
“Live Who You Are” is such a great tagline because it means the same thing to everybody — but in the end, it’s also different to everybody. Whether you’re renting your first studio apartment on the Upper East Side, or you’re buying a mountain house in Colorado, a beach house in Hawaii, or an Italian villa on Lake Garda, it’s still “Live Who You Are.” Those are very different material things, yet everyone can relate, no matter what stage of life they’re in.
Sounds like the foundation of a solid pipeline. Can you share some recent referral wins across the network?
We had a Palm Beach agent with a client who was selling a huge house on Cape Cod. We referred it to Corcoran Property Advisors, our affiliate in Boston, and we referred it to Sotheby’s (which, like Corcoran, is also part of Anywhere Real Estate) as well. The seller was also speaking with a couple of other companies. We just found out that our affiliate won the listing — an almost $20 million house in Hyannis Port, next to the Kennedy Compound. I started my relocation career in Boston, so I know a lot of the players in Massachusetts and Cape Cod, and Corcoran Property Advisors beat out a couple of heavy hitters on Cape Cod. That was a big win. Another example is we had an agent in our New York City Upper West Side office with a client from Singapore who was looking to move to New York. After looking around with our agent, he decided he would rather be in San Francisco. So, we referred him to Corcoran Icon Properties, we matched him with a great agent, and he just closed a $3.4 million house in San Francisco.
How do you see the business going forward in the next year?
On the more traditional relocation side of the business, we’ve been working with a big corporate relocation from Chicago to New York and Miami that involves placing 300 people. It’s been going on since 2022 and will probably stretch into 2025. We’re working with brokerage agents in New York City and Miami, and with some of our affiliate agents in Westchester and the New Jersey suburbs. A lot of these people have families, and maybe they’ve never been here before and are trying to figure out where they want to go. It’s a lot of hand-holding and talking to them and just making it easier on them. Uprooting yourself and moving somewhere else can be scary but also very exciting, so we try to match them with an agent that will take care of them and make it less stressful.
Last but not least, can you talk about your college major of geography?
The geography background has been very helpful, and it came naturally. My parents were teachers, so we would drive cross country every summer — I’d always pick up real estate books in the different grocery stores and leaf through them. Now, when agents have referrals for certain areas, there are a lot of times when I’ve been there and I’m familiar with the place.
