One seat · Arizona
We are looking for one broker in Arizona.
StepStone Realty is an investor-focused brokerage in Texas. Our agents do not just work with investors, they are investors — wraps, subject-to, assignments, wholesale, the deals most brokerages tolerate at best. We are opening Arizona, and we are looking for one person to run it with us as a 30% owner.
Not an agent. A partner. You would be the Designated Broker of a new Arizona company that we build, license and operate behind you.
That number reaches Dan Francis, not a call centre. There is no form on this page on purpose.
You do two things. We do everything else.
This is the whole arrangement, and the imbalance in the two lists below is the point of it.
Your side
-
Answer agent questions
Be the person an agent calls when a deal is unusual and they need a real answer.
-
Help recruit
Talk to agents who should be with us. You will not be cold-calling strangers — you will be telling people who already know you what you are building.
-
A little education
Teach the occasional class. We write the curriculum; we have been running it in Texas for years.
Our side
- Forming and licensing the Arizona entity
- Errors and omissions insurance
- Compliance systems and policy
- Transaction management and coordination
- The CRM, and the technology behind it
- Marketing, branding and the recruiting funnel
- Bookkeeping, commission disbursement and the back office
- Continuing-education infrastructure through StepStone University
None of this is a plan. It is running in Texas today, and it is what you would be plugged into rather than asked to build.
What you need — and what you do not
What you need now
An Arizona broker's licence — or three of the last five years licensed and the willingness to go and earn one.
If you hold a salesperson's licence with three years behind you, we will fund the 90-hour broker course, the Broker Management Clinic and the exam, and carry you while you do it.
What you do not need
- Your own brokerage. We form and license the entity.
- Your own E&O policy, compliance manual or transaction coordinator.
- Capital. There is an option to put some in for better terms, and it is genuinely optional.
- A book of agents ready to move. A room of people who trust you is enough.
Arizona is the stricter of the two. A broker's licence takes three of the last five years licensed, a 90-hour pre-licence course and the 9-hour Broker Management Clinic — months, not evenings. That is precisely why we will pay for it for the right person rather than wait for someone who already has it.
Who you would be doing this with
You are being asked to consider a partnership with people you have never met, in a state we do not live in. Here is everything you need to check us out.
Dan Francis
CEO & Founder, StepStone Realty · TREC #795239
Runs the technology, the back office and the expansion. Also built and runs our loan-servicing company, which is where the wrap-note side of this comes from.
Angie Rhea
Broker, StepStone Realty · TREC #563812
Broker of record in Texas. She would be on your second conversation, and she is the one who will ask you the hard questions about supervision and compliance.
- StepStone Realty, LLC — the brokerage. Investor-focused, flat fee, no commission split.
- StepStone University — our continuing-education arm. Real classes, real credit, and the reason agents find us in the first place.
- Black Sheep Broker — the recruiting side, which is the site you are reading.
- Loan servicing — a sister company servicing wraparound notes, which is why our people can actually close creative deals rather than just talk about them.
StepStone Realty, LLC · 1711 S Colorado St, Suite E202, Lockhart, TX 78644 · 512-731-4541
Why Arizona
Phoenix is one of the busiest creative-finance and wholesale markets in the country, and almost none of the brokerages serving it were built for the agent who invests rather than the agent who lists.
We are starting in Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, Tucson and Prescott. One partner, one state — we are not franchising this and we are not opening six at once. The reason it is one seat is that the whole model depends on the partner being the person other agents already turn to, and there is only one of those in a market at a time.
When this is the wrong fit
Worth saying plainly, because the alternative is wasting a year of somebody's life finding out.
- You want to keep producing full-time and add a title. This is a builder's seat, not an honorific.
- You need this to pay you within the first year. It will not. Come to this with income that already works.
- You want to run your own team under our licence. That is a different arrangement and not one we are offering.
- You already own a brokerage. Then you already have everything we would be providing, and we have nothing worth trading you.
Questions people actually ask
What exactly is the offer?
30% ownership of a new Arizona company. You serve as its Designated Broker, answer agent questions, help recruit, and teach the occasional class. StepStone forms and licenses the entity and provides errors and omissions insurance, compliance, transaction management, the CRM, marketing, bookkeeping and the back office. We have already papered this deal once for another state, so there is a real document to show you rather than a concept.
Do I need my own brokerage already?
No, and if you have one this is probably the wrong conversation — you would already own everything we are offering. The whole point is that we build the company. What we cannot build is somebody the agents in Arizona already trust.
I have a salesperson's licence, not a broker's. Am I out?
Not necessarily. If you have been licensed three of the last five years, the broker's licence is a 90-hour course, the Broker Management Clinic and an exam away — and we will pay for all of it and carry you through it. It takes months rather than weeks, so the conversation has to start sooner, but a licence is a thing we can buy. Trust is not.
Does this pay me right away?
No. Plan on roughly twelve months of very little, because a new state brokerage earns nothing until it has agents closing. Anyone considering this needs income that already works — existing production, rentals, a spouse's income, or a business that runs without them. We would rather say that now than have it end a partnership in month eight.
Do I have to put money in?
No. There is an optional path where a partner contributes capital toward the state's startup costs in exchange for better terms, and there is a path with no capital at all that reaches the same ownership over time. Both are real and we will walk you through the numbers on either.
What happens to my stake if StepStone gets sold?
It is protected in writing, and it was the first question the last candidate asked. There is a floor tied to your years of service and a separate valuation of your state, and you get whichever is greater. Ask and we will send the actual language.
Why only one person per state?
Because the model depends on the partner being the person other agents already turn to, and there is only one of those in a market at a time. We are not franchising this and we are not opening six states at once.
I am not interested, but I know who you should talk to.
That is genuinely the most useful call we could get. Ring 512-731-4541 and give us the name — we would rather hear it from somebody who knows them than find them cold.
If you are the one, or you know who is
Either call is worth making. If this is not for you but you know the person in Arizona it is for, that is genuinely the most useful phone call we could have.