Firm Consolidates South Bay Sales Force
Slumping real estate sales forced Coldwell Banker this week to close its San Pedro real estate office and consolidate its operations with the firm’s four other South Bay offices.
Although the 26-agent operation is not the first real estate office to close this year because of a slowdown in the industry, some area real estate agents said they are surprised by the closure of an office under the umbrella of a major financial corporation.
The San Pedro office’s profits dropped 29.7% within the last year, said Bob Swanson, general sales manager for the company in Southern California. “We’re merely closing an office that has been weak,” Swanson said. “We’re taking resources that we had in that office and putting them in our other offices.”
To consolidate operations, Coldwell will move its Torrance operations to a new, larger office in Redondo Beach, said Swanson. The new office, to open by November, will have 48 agents, 13 more than in Torrance, he said. Some of them will come from the defunct San Pedro operation. The company will keep its three existing offices on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
Gasper Guarrasi, vice president of Landmark Co., which owns San Pedro-based Landmark Realty, said he was surprised at Coldwell’s decision to close its office instead of just cutting costs and keeping it open.
According to Guarrasi, Landmark suffered a 25% sales decrease in the last fiscal quarter.
The company noticed decreases in housing sales 18 months ago, said Guarrasi, and to buffer the effect, Landmark cut overhead and consolidated its offices. The company’s six sales offices of two years ago have been incorporated into one main office in Rancho Palos Verdes and a smaller office in San Pedro, he said.
Of the 26 agents in the Coldwell’s San Pedro office, which was on Western Avenue, Swanson said about 20 will be moved to the company’s other offices.
As for the ones who won’t remain with the company, Bob Bradarich, owner of Remax Seapoint Realty in San Pedro, said not to worry. He visited Coldwell’s San Pedro office on Monday “on a recruiting mission,” he said.
Like other real estate agencies, Remax has also experienced a decline in sales, a 10% decrease this year, Bradarich said. He believes his office’s sales have not slumped as badly because his agents, prodded by a monthly retainer of about $1,000 they pay to work for Remax, sell a greater number of properties than their competitors, he said.
According to TRW Real Estate Information Services, the number of houses and condominiums sold in San Pedro in 1990 have decreased 15% from 1989.
In Southern California, sales from 1988 to 1989 fell 12%. Sales figures for 1990, as of September, are down almost another 11% from the previous year.
Local brokers attributed the downturn in sales to fluctuating interest rates, the public’s trepidation about the Middle East, national budget crisis and local unemployment. Though optimistic that the real estate industry will rebound from the present slowdown, they were cautious in predicting when that would occur.
“It’s a typical cycle we seem to go through every five years,” said Coldwell’s Swanson. “(Sales) will improve. It’s just a matter of when.”
