IRVINE, CA—Brokers play a vital role in the real estate process, and their local expertise and marketing skills are key to every transaction on the firm's platform, Auction.com's newly hired managing director of business development Yan Khamish tells GlobeSt.com. We spoke with Khamish about the new commercial broker channel he has been charged with nurturing, and what role brokers play in the auction process.

GlobeSt.com: What relationship do you desire between Auction.com and the brokerage community?

Khamish: CRE brokers play such a key role in the real estate ecosystem, and we're committed to partnering with them across the country and doing everything we can to help them succeed. Auction.com is looking to foster long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships with the broker community. Brokers play a vital role in the real estate process, and their local expertise and marketing skills are key to every transaction on our platform. We work closely with brokers in our mission to enhance the buying and selling experience for everyone. And that means increasing awareness of our platform among brokers and providing them with a clear understanding that when Auction.com and brokers team up, buyers and sellers get the best of all worlds: local market knowledge, and a global reach – backed by a powerful online transaction platform to achieve optimal results.

GlobeSt.com: What is the best way for your firm to foster this relationship?

Khamish: We're eager to connect with brokers, and the best way to do that is by empowering them through education. We want to help brokers better understand how our platform works, give them an opportunity to learn about our online process and, ideally, test the value of a property on our platform. To that end, we just hosted a webinar focused specifically on educating brokers about Auction.com and what makes us an attractive partner. We are hosting local events and doing tremendous outreach through national and regional CRE organizations.

GlobeSt.com: What do brokers get from Auction.com that they don't get from other platforms?

Khamish: There's nothing else out there like Auction.com. Our platform empowers brokers on a number of fronts. We enable them to spend more time with their existing clients and also have more time to prospect for new clients and business that we can actually drive to them. Auction.com provides a value-added resource for brokers that delivers advantages such as global exposure, a multi-million-dollar marketing program, faster closings and other incentives, all of which enables brokers to focus their attention on meeting their clients' needs and growing their business through referrals and repeat engagements. And, we can create a higher certainty of closing through the elimination of re-trades. Working with Auction.com allows brokers to increase their sales volume while diversifying their business across new markets and property types.

GlobeSt.com: What else are you hoping to achieve at Auction.com?

Khamish: Our interests are aligned. We want Auction.com to become the platform that CRE brokers universally choose for building their successful business. Our platform is very broker friendly, and we're here to work together.

We are looking to:

• Reduce execution risk by minimizing re-trades and maximizing exposure
• Create faster, more transparent, more efficient transactions
• Do the busy work so brokers can focus on their clients and other potential buyers
• Send buyers directly to brokers, forging relationships and creating future opportunities that wouldn't have existed otherwise.