ARA is the umbrella organization that coordinates the marketing and other resources of its 15 firms, all of whom are among the dominant players in their market. Each of the offices has a fairly uniform commission split for brokers that tops out at 70% to 30%. Jeff Hawks, who owns ARA's Denver office, tells GlobeSt.com that as part of ARA, Millburn, like the others, will pay his share of the costs incurred by ARA in running the overall company, which does not mark up costs since it is owned by the owners of its individual offices.

"While there's a lot of pressure for [the big national firms] to cut back expenses; we overspend on our brokers," Hawks says. "We have found that if you attract highly productive firms and overspend, they will simply do more business and it will work out."

Hawks says about half of the owners of its individual offices are ex-pats of CB Richard Ellis. Unlike national brokerage chains, where offices keep their own databases and there is competition among brokers in different offices--and among national teams and local teams--there is only one database at ARA and no competition among brokers; the full commission goes to the listing broker, regardless of whether the listing was referred by another office.

"As a result, you don't end up in a situation where a national investment sales team wins a client like Equity Residential and then hires the local guy to sell the property at a substantial discount to what he would normally get if he did it directly," Hawks says. "We threw that out; when a client lists with us, 100% of the fee goes to the guy on the ground."

The set up is apparently attractive, but the interview process is daunting and space is limited. Hawks estimates ARA likely will only open three more offices in the next 18 months or so and may not open many more beyond that.

"We're almost to capacity for two reasons; first, we are just focused on the top producers in the major markets and, second, to become a partner all current partners have to vote in favor or it doesn't happen," he says. "Many people have said they want to be our next office but very few have been chosen."