A real estate succession plan built over two decades

For real estate professionals, succession planning can be easy to postpone. The business is personal, the work is demanding and many agents remain deeply involved long after they could have stepped away.Lucia Cooke’s transition to the next generation of her North Carolina real estate business is one built over decades — with her daughter Allison Zimmerman involved for as long as she can remember.Cooke Residential, serving the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area, has operated independently under its own brand since 2014. Cooke and Zimmerman are now moving toward a shared leadership structure, with Zimmerman serving as broker in charge and the two working as co-owners.Zimmerman said the transition was not a last-minute decision. It grew out of the role she had been preparing to assume since entering real estate. “I think, in many ways, I’ve always succession planned,” she told HousingWire. “First, I jumped into this business 22 years ago. It was always sort of the plan that I would eventually take the reins. We’ve been able to share these reins, and we’ve been able to create an incredible working partnership over the course of the 22 years. I’ve been watching [Cooke] in this business sin...