February 3, 2010 in Business, City

Tomlinson Real Estate offices join Coldwell Banker

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Tomlinson Real Estate Group Spokane offices Wednesday became affiliates of Coldwell Banker, in the process becoming the national company’s third largest member.

The four offices — in Cheney, Spokane Valley, and the north and south sides of Spokane — join 12 Tomlinson offices in Eastern Washington and Idaho that already carry the Coldwell Banker brand, noted Tomlinson Chairman Bob Tomlinson.

The 71-year-old Spokane brokerage, which will take the name Coldwell Banker Tomlinson, employs almost 1,000 across its network, he said.

Tomlinson co-owns the company with Bryan Walker, Mike Hume, and Fred Meyer.

Coldwell Banker President Jim Gillespie, who met with Tomlinson agents and brokers at the CenterPlace Regional Events Center, said they will add to a corps spanning six continents in 3,200 offices.

The company already has one Spokane affiliate, Coldwell Banker Northwest, and that relationship will not change, he said, adding that there are multiple affiliates in several markets.

Gillespie said he is optimistic about home sales in 2010, but urged buyers who can qualify for an $8,000 federal income tax credit to make their purchase before the incentive expires April 30. Although the deadline was extended from Nov. 30, he said congressional leaders tell him a second extension will not happen.

The tax incentive, plus the combination of high home inventories, and low interest rates and home prices, make this the “perfect time” to buy a home, he said, as long as buyers are confident about their jobs.

The market may be depressed now, but population growth and increasing sales to minorities and single women will create demand for almost 59 million new housing units by 2030, Gillespie said.

Five comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  edmitch on February 03 at 6:42 p.m.

  Is there a source for this quote?
  “The market may be depressed now, but population growth and increasing sales to minorities and single women will create demand for almost 59 million new housing units by 2030, Gillespie said”

  That implies that over the next 20 years, new housing unit construction will average nearly 3 million new units per year.

  According to the U.S. Census, about 1.3 million to 1.6 million annual new units were typically built from the 1970s to the early 2000s. Only in the years 2005 and 2006, during the cheap money and housing mania, did new housing unit construction briefly cross the 2 million/year rate for a few months, annualized. Seems likely that home construction will eventually revert back to about a 1.4 to 1.5 million rate, where it had been for many years.

  For 2009, the annual rate was about 800,000 new homes. With a surplus of available housing and 25% of home buyers “underwater” on their mortgage, an estimate of 3 million new homes constructed per year seems remarkably aggressive. Deutsche Bank issued an estimate last summer that the percent of underwater mortgage holders may reach 50% by 2011.

  What does Gillespie know that we do not know? A 3 million/year rate does not seem likely.

  References:
  Go down to Housing Units Completed, here
  http://www.census.gov/const/www/newresconstindex.html

• 

  Orange on February 03 at 7:03 p.m.

  to edmitch. Nice research. There will be no where near the home sales they are predicting.

• 

  zelda on February 03 at 7:09 p.m.

  Realtors have zero credibility. Ninety-nine percent of what they say is a crock. It was only a few weeks ago that some brokerage group dropped its cable TV ads saying “home prices prices double every 10 years!”. I put them in the same category as gold bugs and rainmakers.

• 

  empyrius on February 03 at 7:23 p.m.

  The little man got bought out! Another victory for small business entrepreneurs right!

  Also:

  The only houses that are going to be bought by “minorities” and single women are the houses the working-class let the bank take back b/c they can no longer afford their payments.

  Meanwhile the U.S. government better just keep building those prisons b/c the ever rising homeless population will have to be housed somewhere . . .

  Maybe we can start outsourcing our prison system to the worldwide gulag the American government runs; homeless person/terrorist, whatever, same thing!

  Har har har har

• 

  misjustice on February 03 at 9:52 p.m.

  Zelda? People don’t stay in the real estate profession for long if they aren’t credible. Word gets around & the ruthless ones are out in no time. I sold properties for over 20 years & had many happy return clients.

  I also could have predicted the day that Tomlinson would put up a Coldwell Banker sign. I learned several years during one of their annual meetings that they had purchased a CB office in Tri-Cities and that all companies would retain their own identities. Bull! I was also the owner of a CB office for several years & the CB franchise won’t ‘let’ competing companies keep their own name unless they know the competitor is joining along really soon!