The current downward cycle in the housing market, complicated by tightened lending standards, distressed properties, and shadow inventories in all price ranges, has created many new challenges with un-met solutions for home buyers and sellers. This has positioned First Team Real Estate and its Estates division, First Team Estates®, to grow its operations by providing new and real-time solutions supported by technology to meet the evolving consumer needs. During 2010, the company expanded by eight branches beyond Orange County into several new markets, and merged four smaller branches into two larger state-of-the-art offices in high-visibility locations.
In the past year, First Team branched into new territory outside its home base of Orange County by opening offices in such luxury locales as Beverly Hills, Marina del
Rey, Pasadena, Westlake, and San Diego.
It also opened two new facilities, including a an ultra-modern, high-tech, 12,000-square-foot office with a 20-foot waterfall in the lobby and a 2,000-square-foot meeting room, in a prominent location on Crown Valley Parkway in Mission Viejo adjacent to The Shops at Mission Viejo and The Kaleidoscope.
First Team owner and Chief Executive Officer, Cameron Merage, said increasing the company’s size during a down market is a natural move given its tradition in doing so during its 35 year history. It is also in view of First Team’s decade-long statistical position as Orange County’s top ranking real estate company in total sales exceeding its nearest competitor by 2.5 times, in 2010. That ranking was determined by independent compilation
and analysis of industry figures, which also show the company ranks ninth in overall sales volume across all national and local brokerages across the U.S. This growth is unique in that First Team is the largest non-franchised brokerage in Southern California, founded in OC in 1976 and still family owned and operated.
“The company has always had a counter-cyclical tradition of growing its market share in down markets. In the 35 years of its existence, it has grown dramatically and consistently due to being an aggressive leader in constant innovation, refinement, and improvement in the ways it meets changing market, agent, and consumer needs,” Merage said. “That has put us in a very solid position to grow at a time when consumer needs are much wider and more complicated than when the market was at its peak.”
Counter-cyclical First Team® Real Estate expands in down market Now is best time to grow market share, says company owner/ceo
Merage added that any down market is challenging, but the current real estate situation is even more difficult to navigate than in the past, due to a variety of factors. Financial institutions have made it much more difficult for buyers to qualify for loans; that and a mix of short sale properties, bank-owned properties in all price ranges, and a shadow inventory of bank-owned properties yet to be put on the market require a new kind of expertise in real estate agents and the companies that support them to maximize opportunities for buyers or sellers represented, he said.
He maintained that First Team has set itself up to thrive and grow in just such a market due, to what he calls, “key drivers”
See FIRST TEAM, page 18
