Bamboo Realty closes its Houston office

Sometimes you need to prune a tree’s branches so it can remain healthy.

That’s what a source says is happening at Bamboo Realty, which closed its Houston office last week.

The brokerage began as a rental-only firm in 2009 and began representing buyers and sellers in 2011. Since then, Bamboo Realty has become known as a “for millennials by millennials” brokerage that focuses on capturing clients at the rental stage and guiding them toward homeownership.

The decision to close the Houston branch comes a few months after Bamboo Realty hired Alyssa Hellman, formerly of the Go School of Real Estate, to become the company’s head coach, a new position. She started October 1.

Hellman gave this quick statement to Inman:

“All is totally okay. Good, actually. We just had to make some really hard decisions in Houston, to grow and thrive in other areas that are performing so well.”

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“Sometimes the hardest decisions are the right ones. We’re as solid as ever in Denver, Raleigh and Dallas. It was just time to move on in Houston,” she added.

Bamboo Realty CEO Sarah Jones said she doesn’t know what the exact future of the Houston team will be, but within hours of announcing the closure to her team, a number of agents approached her about “buying it.”

“We were blown away, ” she said in an email. “We don’t know what it looks like yet, but we are considering a licensing/ franchise type of arrangement to keep Bamboo Houston going under different circumstances.”

In the meantime, Bamboo is offering help for agents who want to transition to other brokerages or to one of Bamboo’s other locations.

“We’ve talked to one agent who will be relocating to the Denver office, and two more transitioning to the Dallas office,” Jones said. “Our no. 1 goal at this point is to minimize the impact on the clients.”

Jones ended the email by giving a glimpse into the brokerage’s future, which includes an expansion into two unspecified locations within the next 12 to 18 months.

Email Marian McPherson