How one Army pilot is bringing military camaraderie to the real estate industry

Fellow veterans have an eagerness to support each other. They will often build companies specifically around the idea of creating a safe and supportive environment where their teams can do meaningful work while making good income. Jason Anderson has done exactly this in his real estate brokerage, VeteranPCS.

Anderson has developed a network of vetted real estate professionals who have agreed to participate in a program that provides $200-$4,000 cash back to clients to help with the moving costs and another 10% to charity. 

His brokerage focuses on military families who are PCSing, leaning heavily on Anderson’s first-hand experience from his own time in service, but real estate professionals don’t need to work for VeteranPCS to be a part of his referral network. He says the network exists solely to serve a vital need within the military community, so it’s open to any real estate professional as long as they agree to participate in the cash back program, are a military veteran with an honorable or medical discharge or a military spouse and pass his vetting call.

Anderson’s military service began in 2012 when he was commissioned as an aviation officer in the Army flying AH-64D Apache helicopters. He then served in South Korea, Fort Liberty, and Fort Carson, with a combat deployment to Afghanistan, and a tour to eastern Europe. He served in leadership roles as a Platoon Leader and Troop Commander, accumulating over 1000 flight hours in the process. Anderson said, “My time in the Army as a leader and combat aviator were some of the best years of my life, and truly shaped my character, work ethic and integrity. It was demanding and challenging nearly every day, but flying the Apache helicopter was a hell of a good time. ‘Mission first, people always,’ was a core belief in the military, and is now the roots of VeteranPCS.”

Anderson’s time in service played a pivotal role in his success in entrepreneurship because it prepared him for the adversity he would face in launching and running a business. But he was faced with twice the challenge that most entrepreneurs are because he launched both the brokerage and the referral network at essentially the same time. This meant dividing his time, energy and capital between two entities. It was a lot more difficult, but he says he felt like it was the right thing to do.

“When a service member goes through a PCS, it’s often chaotic and stressful because they still have a job to do, so a lot of the moving process typically falls to the spouse,” Anderson explained. “I know how that goes because I’ve been through it a few times, so I knew I could help some of my fellow service members, but I couldn’t help all of them, so I chose to start the referral network at the same time. This enabled me to leverage the power of my network to help more service members than I could on my own.”

He shared a story about his own entry into the industry when he didn’t have the money to buy leads and had to resort to other means to find business. There weren’t many good options available to new agents—essentially, they could either hound friends and family for introductions to people who might want to sell or purchase a home someday, or they could buy expensive leads from one of the countless lead gen websites online today, which are often also resold to multiple agents, making them essentially worthless. 

Now he had two problems to solve. 

The first was a lack of support for service members PCSing, and now that he had become an agent, he identified a second problem, which was that he didn’t have access to quality leads at an affordable price.

As Anderson grew the VeteranPCS referral network, he could now serve more clients, send business to other real estate professionals who are also veterans, put money back in the hands of military homebuyers, and donate money to veteran charities.

Anderson shared, “The more I learned about the industry, military spouse and veteran unemployment, and big corporations taking advantage of our service members the more I thought, ‘Why isn't there just a simple website that equally supports moving military families, veteran and military spouse businesses, and military-focused charity?’ And just like that, VeteranPCS was born. A company dedicated to the mission: Military Families Helping Military Families Move.”

Anderson says he’s on a mission to impact the military community in a big way by eliminating one big worry that active duty service members face—moving. His vision is to serve over 10,000 moving military families each year through his network, which translates into a staggering $10 million given back to service members while supporting thousands of veteran and military spouse real estate professionals. Real estate professionals who want to join the VeteranPCS referral network can apply at: https://veteranpcs.com.