Questions remain about the fate of local real estate agency
ReMax Platinum Properties after a recent downsizing move.
Hollister – Questions remain about the fate of local real estate agency ReMax Platinum Properties after a recent downsizing move.
Hollister still has a ReMax franchise, said Ronda Scholting, a spokeswoman for ReMax International, but ReMax’s old office at 341 Tres Pinos Road is now occupied by Coldwell Banker.
“What I know is, we were told the office was being downsized,” said Dee Brown, a former broker associate with ReMax Platinum Properties who now works for ReMax Valley Properties in Morgan Hill.
Scholting said she couldn’t offer any details about changes to the local agency. She noted that ReMax is “like Pizza Hut” in that each office is independently owned.
The Hollister office has four owners: Vedana Freitas, Deborah Shamnoski, and Augie and Calla Bertao. Shamnoski and the Bertaos did not return phone calls Friday.
Freitas said she can’t comment on the move or the downsizing, because she wasn’t involved in those decisions. She confirmed that she’s still a ReMax partner, but could not say whether she will continue to serve that role.
Beyond ReMax, agents have been leaving the real estate business as the housing market continues to struggle. According to the San Benito County Association of Realtors, association membership fell from 282 to 243 between 2006 and 2007, and Association President Rick Pennington of Pennington Town and Country Realty predicted that membership will probably fall by another 10 percent or 12 percent in 2008.
“There are still a lot of people doing real estate,” Pennington said. “Are people leaving the business? Yes, but it’s not half. It’s maybe a quarter.”
The market has been in a downturn for about two years, he said, and that downturn will likely continue for another eight to 12 months. But Pennington said the seriousness of the situation probably has been exaggerated by the media, and that things eventually will improve.
When asked about ReMax, Pennington said he isn’t at liberty to discuss the company’s “special circumstances.”
Brown said that when she heard that ReMax was downsizing, she decided to “expand her business” by moving her office to Morgan Hill. But she still lives in Hollister, is still trying to sell homes here and still thinks of the city as her “main base of work.”
“I don’t want to be considered an out-of-town agent,” she said.
At the time Brown left, there were 14 agents working at the ReMax’s Hollister office, she said.
“I really liked the people there,” Brown said. “It had an atmosphere of support and congeniality rarely found in real estate offices.”
