You joined Carol Jones, Realtors in January 2009. Tell us about the company. We are owned by Home Services of America, a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate. This is my third company with Home Services (which) operates four different entities – a mortgage operation, a title operation, an insurance company and real estate. Here at Carol Jones, we have real estate and mortgage. … We have around 300 agents and about 25 employees. I oversee the operation of the real estate company and also, on a local level, the mortgage company.
Prior to coming to Springfield, you were with Home Services in Tucson, Ariz. What stands out about real estate in the Springfield area? The diversity … of the market. The types of housing available between Branson and Springfield are like two different worlds in 30 minutes. That’s something that I find extremely intriguing. When I go to Branson, I kind of have to shift gears. … There’s a lot of entrepreneurial activity here that you wouldn’t suspect unless you’ve visited southwest Missouri. I was taken aback by that when I first got here. For a town this size, it’s rather remarkable. What I find interesting and very compelling for this community is that so many (Missouri State) and Drury students, etc., stay in Springfield upon graduation, which really gives a great base to this community. As an overall number compared to Tucson, it’s amazing.
What objectives are you pursuing for the company? One of our thrusts is the Internet and technology. Statistically, around 78 percent of all buyers do their home searches on the Internet now. We’ve worked very diligently at developing a very good Web site. … We’ve launched mobile technology, where you can drive up in front of a house and go to www.caroljones.com and get the information for that property. We’ve put virtual tours on all of our listings this year. We’re about to launch a really cool tool where the seller will get weekly updates … so they can track the activity in their neighborhood. We continue to grow our intranet set of tools for our agents. We brought in ProKit, a set of tools they can use for business planning. They can produce fliers on a listing by simply dropping in a (Multilist Service) number (and) it automatically populates it. We’re working on doing an e-card system (for) marketing through Internet cards sent to an e-mail address.
What challenges are Realtors facing now? I think the biggest challenge agents have today is managing expectations of buyers and sellers. Coming out of 2004, 2005, 2006, things were happening at a rapid pace. Now there are mortgage issues, and getting people qualified is much more particular. … We were drinking out of a fire hose. Now, we’re drinking out of a garden hose. We think that the units are probably leveling out, both in southwest Missouri and across the country. The one concern we have that’s hard to forecast is what’s going to happen to average sales price. There are a lot of foreclosures out there that haven’t come into the market. Typically, what’s happened is the foreclosures and the short sales have contributed a great deal to the drop in the average sales price. So that’s been a challenge. And we run into a situation now where consumers, because the prices have dropped, are upside-down on their homes. … Are they going to stay in the house? The gorilla in the closet is what’s going to happen to average sales price. At the end of 2009, the average sales price in the Springfield market was $131,600, according to (Greater Springfield Board of Realtors). In 2007, it was $147,600. That’s an 11 percent decrease, and units have dropped 19 percent since 2007.
Do you think a recovery is coming? The recovery is going to be very slow. It’s not going to happen in a matter of one year or two. It may be over a four-, five- or six-year period, so there’ll be a gradual recovery. And we’re seeing some signs of that in unit increases in southwest Missouri.
Do you see any commercial trends? The commercial market’s just really going into the recession that the residential market had. (It’s) late coming into it, and it’s just now starting to occur. Our trend has been that our unit activity is consistent, but it’s a shift from sales to leasing.[[In-content Ad]]
