Rivals Form Real Estate ‘Alliance’ : Marketing: In a non-merger, Grubb & Ellis pools resources with Better Homes and Gardens to compete nationally.

In an effort to better compete with the biggest of the national residential real estate chains, Grubb & Ellis and Better Homes and Gardens agreed Monday to share support services and referrals among their offices in Southern California.

It’s not exactly a merger--neither is buying the other. The parties are choosing to call it an alliance.

It will give Iowa-based Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Service a stronger presence in Southern California.

And it will allow Grubb & Ellis Residential Brokerage Services to build a national referral system for California customers moving to other states, where it has no presence.

Also, the companies are hoping to grow by attracting independent real estate companies to their network. Officials pointed out that more than 35% of the residential real estate market is controlled by national networks. As that share increases, they said, independent real estate companies will need to find new methods to compete.

Grubb & Ellis has eight residential offices in Orange County and three in San Diego County. Better Homes has five franchisees in Orange County and 60 throughout Southern California.

Although the alliance will affect brokers directly, the buying and selling public will notice only a change in the companies’ signs for the time being as each adds the other’s name.

But eventually people should notice better service, said Hal Ellis, chairman and chief executive of Grubb & Ellis.

“This alliance addresses the changes in our industry,” he said. “Service delivery systems are being dominated by the larger companies, and technology is driving that. There is a necessity to make this market run more efficiently, and that necessitates size and capital investment.”

San Francisco-based Grubb & Ellis is the largest full-service real estate company in the country, but its residential business is limited to California.