Changing brokerages? Your website is the thing people forget.
A brokerage move is planned carefully for everything except the online presence, and then the profile page disappears on the Friday. If you are considering a move, this is worth thinking about before rather than after.
01What actually disappears
- Your brokerage profile page. It was on their domain, so it goes when you do. Anything that ranked, ranked for them.
- Your listings on their site. They follow the brokerage, not you.
- Any email on their domain. Every client who has your old address now bounces.
- Testimonials and reviews collected there. Usually not portable.
- Links people saved. Anyone who bookmarked you, or has your old card, lands on a 404 or on the agent who replaced you.
- None of that is anyone behaving badly. It is simply what happens when your presence lives on somebody else's domain.
02What survives if it is yours
- Your domain, and everything that has ever ranked on it.
- Your content — the neighbourhood pages, the market commentary, the guides you wrote.
- Your leads and their history, because they were captured into your own site rather than a brokerage CRM.
- Your email, if it is on your own domain rather than theirs.
- Your listings, because your DDF® feed is issued to you, not to your brokerage. Your site keeps showing them wherever you hang your licence.
That last one surprises people. See how DDF® access works — the credentials are yours.
03What to do before you give notice
- Get your own domain if you do not have one, and register it in your own name. Do this first and do it quietly; it costs very little.
- Move your email off the brokerage domain. This is the change that causes the most disruption and the one people leave latest.
- Export anything you can — your client list, testimonials, photos of your listings, anything you wrote.
- Check what your agreement says about client lists and marketing material. Better to know now.
- Have somewhere for people to land. Even a single page on your own domain beats a dead link during the changeover.
04The part that changes on your new brokerage
- Your brokerage name, logo and the required brokerage identification all change on your site. On a PropertyConnector site that is a settings change rather than a rebuild — the brokerage name and the compliance footer update, and your listings re-associate on the next sync.
- What does not change is your domain, your pages, your rankings or your leads. That is the whole argument for having your own site, and a brokerage move is when it stops being theoretical.
If you are moving and also moving website providers, read the switching guide — the redirects matter more than anything else.
Common questions
Should I set up my own site before or after I move?
Before, if you can. Having somewhere to point people during the changeover is worth a great deal, and doing it calmly beats doing it in the first week at a new office.
Does my brokerage own my website?
If it is a page on their domain, effectively yes. If it is your own domain, no. That distinction is the whole thing — see do I own my website.
Will my listings still show if I switch?
Yes. DDF® credentials are issued to you rather than to your brokerage, so your listings keep flowing to your own site. Your brokerage details on the site change; the feed does not.
What about my reviews?
Reviews on a third-party platform such as RankMyAgent or Google stay with you, because those profiles are yours. Reviews collected on a brokerage site usually do not.
How long does it take to set up?
A build is a few weeks depending on how ready your content is. Registering a domain and pointing it somewhere is same-day, and it is the piece worth doing early.