How one real estate company turned their passion into a sustainable business; the story of Mid-Century Homes

With no experience in the industry of real estate, TJ Pierce – the founder and owner of Mid-Century Homes in Boise, Idaho created a company that five years later is giving 14 other people a professional excuse to have fun and love the work that they do all while generating over $25 MM in revenue annually.

Here are 6 factors that made the difference for Mid-Century Homes:

1. A love for people
   • It’s no doubt that real estate is a people business. Mid-century homes takes it one step further and makes certain that each one of their agents truly loves people. It’s so much easier to make the right choice when that core value is at the center of each decision that they make. “People over profit”, says owner TJ Pierce.
2. A love for mid-century architecture
   • When someone oozes their love for this era of architecture it’s undeniable. Everyone that joins the team must have that level of appreciation for the product that they specialize in. That is easily evidenced by the fact that all of the team members who own their home, own one built in the 50’s and 60’s.
3. The willingness to provide value with no guarantee of pay
   • Each agent on the team is chasing knowledge and experiences centered around this era of architecture. Out of that passion Mid-Century Homes provides free monthly home tours. They have captured in photography other great mid-century homes that homeowners have perfected and shared all of these for free with their online audience in an effort to inspire others in their own process of perfecting their mid-century home. They have also provided landscape design classes over the years for those looking to get their yards in the kind of shape that compliments their homes. These are just a few of the expressions of their business – providing knowledge and resources for free or very low cost to provide value to others.
4. A strong commitment to find and reach their target market / audience
   • What do mid-century enthusiasts read? Where do they vacation? Where do they live? What items do they purchase? Are there conventions they frequent? Habits they all have? Shows they all watch? Stores they shop in? Magazines they subscribe to? Mid-Century Homes has spent a great amount of time understanding these things about their target market. The advantage they have… they are their own target market. This makes it quite easy to know what others like them are doing. If there are ways that Mid-Century Homes is able to be visible through any of those avenues you can bet that they have found a way to do it.
5. Strategic partnerships with those that were already marketing to their target market
   • Locally Mid-Century Homes has partnered with their preservationist groups in town. They attend many of the meetings and offer their talents and resources to help promote the greater agenda of saving this era of architecture. Nationally they have partnered up with Atomic Ranch. They have been featured in a past issue under the “Boise edition”. They run regular advertisements through the magazine. They have also partnered up with Modernism Week in Palm Springs and facilitated events and discussions that celebrate all things mid-century architecture and design.
6. Shielding the noise from other industry professionals / experts that said it wouldn’t work.
   • Turning a deaf ear to many industry professionals in Boise, TJ Pierce did all the math and knew it would work. 11,000 mid-century homes have been built in their market. In the lowest of lows, during the Great Recession (well before TJ launched his company),  there were just over 300 mid-century homes that sold. That’s 600 transactions on either the buy or sell side for this team to be a part of. In 2019 654 of these homes sold. TJ was convinced (minus a short rough patch in their first year) there will always be enough of this business to sustain a few passionate REALTORS in this business model. As they continue to increase market share in Boise and in their fifth year of business they will eclipse the $25 MM mark. Did we mention that he has plans to take this business model to other markets with similar inventory?