CENTURY 21 SPAROW-SHORELINE PROVES ITSELF AHEAD OF THE CURVE

By Barbara Crane

Staff Writer

      In a real estate market that features the lowest interest rates in years, it’s natural to assume that residential realtors are doing well, and they are. But how does a company increase its market share when housing inventories are also at a record low, and somewhere around 3,000 realtors are competing for buyers’ and sellers’ attention? The answer, says Randy Smith, president and co-owner of Century 21 Sparow-Shoreline, lies both in having the resources to do things differently and knowing how to do them.

     With his partners, John Gooding and Geary Smith, Century 21 Sparow-Shoreline is doing both. Since Randy Smith became president four years ago, the company has grown to 140 agents, primarily through acquisition. By providing its agents with training, technology and the benefit of partnerships with in-house mortgage and escrow companies, it is one of Long Beach’s top residential real estate companies. Smith explains, “As a brand, Century 21 was number one in 2002 with 18.5 percent market share. Within that, we were the leading Century 21 company in our market share with 4.5 percent share. And we can still do a lot better.”

    Century 21 Sparow-Shoreline came about as a result of a merger in 2000. Geary Smith and John Gooding had been partners in Century 21 Shoreline Properties and were responsible for the majority of sales within the company. They knew Randy Smith, who had become managing partner at Century 21 Sparow in the mid-1990s. The company was known by Century 21 agents throughout the United States as the first Century 21 office in Los Angeles County. It was also doing the highest volume of sales. Seeing each other at meetings, Geary, John and Randy began to talk and saw they had similar management philosophies. “We were both conservative in managing our company’s finances and had no debt,” Gooding recalls. Joining forces to become Century 21 Sparow-Shoreline, they agreed they wanted to provide customers the best quality service and support and give agents the tools to do their best job.

    They have followed through on their goals. The company employs a full-time trainer who plans ongoing classes and a full-time publicist who submits articles about the company and individual brokers and agents to newspapers and magazines. The company also has a full-featured Web site that gives buyers access to the Multiple Listing Service and sometimes matches buyers with agents. “We run into smaller companies who don’t have these resources,” Randy Smith says. “[As a result of the resources] we have agents who have been in the business for six months who are more knowledgeable than brokers who have been in the business for several years.” He adds, “The biggest thrill for me is getting the company big enough” to provide these opportunities for agents.

IN-HOUSE MORTGAGE ND ESCROW SERVICES

     The partners soon took Century 21 Sparow-Shoreline to a new level. In addition to the main office in the Marketplace Business Park, the acquired Century 21 ADK, which became the company’s Lakewood Village office with 30 agents. By upgrading the new office’s technology, it’s sales grew by 66 percent. The company also launched a new direction by initiating partnerships with Western Mutual Mortgage and Interfirst Escrow. Their association with Western Mutual Mortgage places full-time loan agents in both Century 21 Sparow-Shoreline offices. “Our clients can get their credit checked and they can be pre-qualified in 15 minutes,” Randy Smith says. What’s more, the mortgage company often refers its customers to Sparow-Shoreline when they need an agent.

     The company’s relationship with Interfirst Escrow, the largest title insurance provider in the United States, offers similar benefits. Like Western Mutual Mortgage, Interfirst is known as a company with high ethical standards and excellent employees, Smith says. Consumer studies have shown that clients prefer one stop shopping from purchase to mortgage and escrow. Given this preference, it’s advantageous to “offer a full-service agency to handle” the entire transaction, Gooding explained. 

     Agents have left other companies to work for Sparow-Shoreline because of the training and opportunities.  And it isn’t all about the work, the partners agree. Gooding says, “We recently gave a holiday party for the whole company at the Virginia Country Club.  Our agents meet twice a month for sales meetings. We just sent 30 of our top agents to a retreat in San Francisco.” Sponsored by Century 21, the retreat featured classes and time to socialize. “There’s a high level of camaraderie,’ Geary Smith comments. “People go out to lunch together, they take the time to answer each other’s questions and they provide coverage on open houses for each other.” Sometimes, the partners say, transactions multiply in the office when one agent, representing a buyer who has seen her dream house, discovers that another agent has just received the listing on the same property.

“THE MARKET IS HOT”

     “The residential real estate market is exceedingly hot right now,” Gooding says. In addition to low interest rate and low inventory, which is characteristic of most of Southern California, Long Beach has seen people return to the city, further fueling the demand. Gooding says, “About 10 years ago, there was a fairly large exodus from Long Beach, driven by the perception that the schools were not competitive. In the last five years, we’ve seen many of those people move back due to the wonderful job the school district has done in enhancing education.” Geary Smith adds, “Long Beach is also more affordable than neighboring beach cities “from Dana Point to Santa Monica, on a cost per square foot basis.”

     A recent Los Angeles Times survey of home prices across the Southland shows that home prices in zip code 90804, on the edge of Belmont Heights in East Long Beach, showed the highest percentage increase in appreciation in the county during the last year, illustrating that buyers are willing to pay top prices in areas where they may previously have looked for bargains. The partners do not view the current market as a real estate bubble, however. “It would only be a bubble if a lot of inventory were going on the market that buyers couldn’t absorb. I don’t see that happening,” Gooding says. Instead he believes the current housing market will continue until interest rates rise to above 9 percent.

WHY A CAREER IN REAL ESTATE?

     When asked why they pursued careers in real estate, the opportunity to be rewarded for the hard work you put in played a large part in their choices. Geary worked in other sales jobs after he graduated from California State University, Fullerton, but gravitated toward real estate in 1976 when began selling condominiums in Marina Pacifica. “Finding a home for people was something I liked,” Smith says. Gooding was buyer for Ralph’s grocery stores when a side interest in investment property burgeoned into a full-time career was getting off the ground. As partners in Century 21 Shoreline, they did the majority of sales. They still prefer sales and spend weekends hosting Open Houses, continuing to earn top sales awards.

     Randy Smith is responsible for the day-to-day operations at Century 21 Sparow-Shoreline. He, like Gooding, graduated from USC. After spending a few years at a commercial brokerage he joined his family’s data processing company. His responsibility- a taste of what was to come in his current position-included acquiring companies and analyzing profit and loss statements, in other words, growing the business. When data processing services lost out to newer technologies, Smith downsized the company and, in his words, “walked myself out of a job.” After renewing his broker’s license he joined Century 21 Sparow and became president four years later.

     Did they choose their careers wisely? Gooding says, “I enjoy every transaction, and every client is different.” Geary Smith appreciates the flexibility of his work that “changes every day.” Randy Smith explains, “There’s nothing that I’m more excited about. It’s a privilege to work with the people I do. I enjoy being a coach, getting systems in place, all of it.” All caution, however, that real estate careers are not for everyone. Gooding believes that agents have to manage their emotions during the inevitable peaks and valleys of the marketplace and continually manage their time well.

A FEW PREDICTIONS

     The partners in Century 21 Sparow-Shoreline see several real estate trends emerging. For one, Randy Smith says banks are gearing up to enter real estate sales, as soon as federal legislation allows it. He points to recent alignments as evidence of that trend: ReMax with Wells Fargo and Bank of America with Prudential. Although the real estate lobby is fighting the legislation, “You’ll see banks purchasing large residential real estate companies,” he says, if the legislation goes through.

   Smith also sees some slight evidence that the housing market may be beginning to cool down. In looking at the company’s dispute files (a dispute file documents occasions when buyers or sellers try to get out of deals they have made), from the last half of 2001 to the first half of 2002, he notices that the situation has changed. Earlier, sellers wanted out, often because they saw that neighbors were getting higher prices for their property. More recently, buyers are finding more reasons to back out, balking at high prices. Gooding believes that when the market does turn around, which inevitably it will, smaller companies will go out of business but Sparow-Shoreline “will do even better,” because they have systems and resources in place.

   As vice chairman of the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency, Gooding foresees continuing good tidings for Long Beach. “The pace of change is dramatic,” and accelerating, he says. Downtown development such as CityPlace, the West Gateway and the Promenade “will change the face of the city.”