Solid Rock Realtor Michael Urie started the business by himself in Claremore ten years ago. Today, Urie owns four branches of the realtor business in Claremore, Broken Arrow, Vinita, and Miami, and oversees 100 agents in all to help clients market their home or find the best new home or property to purchase.
Solid Rock Realtors wants to help save you the time and effort of buying or selling the ideal home, farm, land or property and will put their experienced real estate agents to work on your behalf.
“We sell and market real estate and offer a variety of real estate services – residential homes are our forte, certainly the majority of our market, but we also deal in vacant land, farms, recreational properties and even commercial property business,” said company founder and owner Michael Urie. “Basically, if there’s dirt attached to it, we deal in it.”
Now in its 10th year, Solid Rock first opened its doors in Claremore in 2009, with Urie as the solitary Realtor, serving clients in the area, but the business and Urie’s wealth of agents and realtors have since grown.
“Claremore is still the main office, the ‘headquarters’ if you will, but we have also opened offices in Vinita in 2014 and Broken Arrow in 2016, and last year we opened an office in Miami,” he said. “This allows us to serve the needs of even more clients and cover even more of northeast Oklahoma.”
Agents at Solid Rock Realtors offer clients customized flexibility to help market their home in the way which best suits them. Among the agents working in the Claremore office are Bill Resh (from left), Kim Washburn, Trainer Mike Washburn, Shae Pearson, and Amy Cookson.
Urie noted his staff of realtors has the training and experience needed to expertly answer the questions of potential and active clients, and formulate a strategy to best serve their needs.
“Many people may not be aware of the difference between a Realtor and a real estate agent,” he said. “A Realtor has undergone extra training and education, as well as adhering to a very strict code of ethics. As such, the real estate professionals we have on staff are ideally-suited to help people protect and assist them during one of the biggest sales or purchases of their life.”
Employing up to 100 agents in his four brokerage locations, Urie’s success within the real estate market is reflected in his sales.
“Last year, in 2018, we sold almost 1,000 properties – 969, I believe and made $123 million in sales,” he said. “We were the first Rogers County-based company to surpass $100 million in sales which was quite a blessing, seeing that the company just started with only me in 2009. God’s been very good to us.”
Coming out of a background in real estate, Urie said his desire to start his own firm was born out of wanting to have a local business to address the specific needs of the community it serves.
“The main thing I saw when I was in real estate before starting Solid Rock, was that many companies had mandatory marketing, which is established by companies not from the area, and many times, not even from the state,” he said. “Often, when you sign on with a brokerage firm, you’ll be required to sign on with their marketing ‘package,’ and how your home or property is marketed is done according to that ‘package’ That might not be ideal for your needs. I just never cared for the idea of someone from outside the area dictating how I market a home locally.
“Some firms in competition with us may go about marketing a home by including it in their monthly magazines, which, by the time they’re published, are already outdated – the land or home may have sold, the client may have changed their mind, etc.,” he said. “People will rarely say ‘I want to pick out a home or farm – let’s go buy a magazine.’ No, they’ll go online or pick up the phone and contact a Realtor.”
At Solid Rock, Urie gives his agents a variety of free marketing options to allow them to customize the sale of a property as best fits each customer, whether that marketing is on the company’s website, Facebook page or even YouTube.
“Each listing we have gets its own video on YouTube, as YouTube searches are second only to Google when people are looking for something,” he said. “Our marketing is by no means ‘cookie cutter.’”
Additionally, the profit made by Urie’s offices, whether in Claremore or one of his other branches, stays local.
“If you’re selling your home or making a land purchase through a national company, they’ll charge a franchise fee, so a percentage of the profits will go to Houston or Philadelphia – wherever the main corporate office is,” he said. “With us that profit stays where we are and goes back into the community as we live here, shop here, worship here, our children go to school here.
The rock solid team at Solid Rock Realtors in Claremore includes Amy Cookson (from left), Brad Mohon, Shae Pearson, owner/realtor Michael Urie, Bill Resh, Mike Washburn, Kim Washburn, Jeni Grissett, and Steve Lemmings.
“Not only that, but something other companies do which we don’t is to charge clients a transaction fee, which, in my opinion, is an absolute junk fee,” he said. “We’re here to help our clients’ dreams come true, not to charge them unnecessarily. We have goals, and we know our clients do as well – we want to help them achieve those goals.”
Solid Rock Realtors now offers a mobile app, with which, customers can narrow their search for property or home by selecting a town or location and “drawing” a circle to present only properties within the circled area.
For more information, to list or inquire about purchasing a property, contact Urie at 918-341-7625, visit him from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, or 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.
See more about Giving Your Dreams A Solid Foundation:
https://www.valuenews.com/giving-your-dreams-a-solid-foundation-news-article_4788
