Long and Foster Real Estate’s Northrop Team

The Northrop Team continues to break Maryland real estate sales records every year. With five offices, Creig Northrop and his team of 50-plus members’ mission is “ … to be the leader in the real estate marketplace using the highest degree of professionalism and expertise to meet and exceed the needs of their clientele.” With record-breaking sales every year, they continue to fulfill that mission.

 Ona Beares has been in residential real estate sales since 1983. She earned her Associate Broker’s license in 1998, holds the National Association of REALTORS® Accredited Buyer Representative (ABR) designation and has been a manager in the Baltimore Metro area since 1986. She currently manages the Clarksville-River Hill office of Long and Foster — the No. 1 office in the Baltimore/Pennsylvania region. She is committed to giving the highest level of service to the public and her agents.

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Mostly through our Web site. We track about 800,000 unique visitors every month. Our total pages viewed for March alone was 20 million — and that’s just an average. The public is driven to our Web site by advertising. All of our business cards, all of our advertisements have our Web address. Another way we drive traffic is by getting away from offering a full write-up of a property [except online]. That really helps traffic. In fact, the average time spent per person on our site is 16 minutes. That’s a very active Web site. I’m on a Web site maybe three, four or five minutes. Sixteen is a great number, especially considering that 70 percent of our visitors are return visitors and 30 percent are new.

We advertise through print, brochures at open houses and business cards. We also pay for optimization. If you Google “Long and Foster” or “Creig Northrop,” it comes up everywhere. It comes down to experience, customer service and exposure for the property. I don’t believe there’s anybody in this area who does what Creig does for a property. His open houses are a perfect example: 90 percent of his properties are open every weekend. That’s phenomenal. He advertises every single property every single week. There isn’t another team out there that can touch his numbers. He has at least 20 pictures per listing, virtual tours, a brochure and brochure boxes for every house, and he runs a lot of TV advertising which pushes traffic back to our Web sites.

We’re not competing against them; they’re assisting us. I think having more knowledge is always better. What these companies are doing is making the buyers more knowledgeable about pricing and condition, and when the buyers are more knowledgeable, you turn that around and the sellers become more knowledgeable, too.

I live on Google. If I have a question, I go ask Google. If Google doesn’t answer me, I go to ask.com. Everything I do is Internet-based, and I believe that’s what’s going to happen with the public. Any Internet product that helps price houses, stage houses or do whatever else is needed to prepare a house to look attractive online, that’s what’s going to help the public; it educates them.

I think virtual tours, including Obeo — who is the biggest player — have created a terrific impact on the industry. A client can now eliminate a property without having to look at it. If any property is attractive, the buyers still have to go see it and get a feel for it. But with virtual tours, you can eliminate properties. And with gas prices the way they are, you want to eliminate as many as possible!

Now, if a home isn’t staged properly, that’s really going to hurt the seller. The staging process is extremely important. All agents do that.

With virtual tours, I believe they have found that this property is something that might work for them. Years ago, we used to do drive-bys. Now they can look at the pictures and make a decision. In fact, it’s gotten to the point that if you go online and a listing has just two pictures, the buyer thinks, “Hmm … I wonder what’s wrong with that house.” Even if a listing has five pictures but none show the bedrooms, it won’t matter that the kitchen looks nice. The buyer is thinking the bedroom must be a mess. A lot of agents don’t bother in this area, and it’s not good for the seller. Buyers end up eliminating properties without knowing everything, and that decision is based on the service provided — or not provided — by that agent.

Creig Northrop, for example (see Rainmaker interview), has dedicated virtual tour people from Obeo. Once Creig or one of his team members lists the property, his Obeo virtual tour people step in. They take a ton of pictures and then forward them to Obeo where they work their magic, get it linked. At that point, Obeo offers upgrades where they can link your virtual tour to more sites than MRIS (the local Multiple Listing Service for the Baltimore/Washington, D.C., area). It increases traffic because more Web sites are pointing back toward us.

The more pictures and virtual tours we can include in our listings, the better. The same applies in reverse for sellers; they need the same thing buyers need. Real estate professionals need the ability to post as many details about a seller’s home as possible and then match them up with a buyer.

Additionally, I think that property searches need to be detailed enough so that a buyer can put different items or features on a “wish list.” Buyers always start by creating a wish list; they get a price and then move backwards from there, removing items to pare the list down to a price they can afford. A good Web site must have a financing calculator and access to a mortgage person and information as well. When buyers start their search, they really don’t know what they can afford. These are services we have to provide.

We’re the facilitators. Putting a buyer and seller together is just the beginning of a transaction. When we do the marketing and an offer is written, someone has to write the offer, someone has to negotiate the terms and once accepted, someone has to get it to settlement. We facilitate termite and home inspections; we get BG&E (Baltimore Gas & Electric) to connect a new customer. Our Web site has a home-service connection where you can find painters and plumbers — basically, all of the things you need in a new house.

Somebody has to do this stuff, and that’s where we come in. Our agents spend hours after the sale performing ministerial acts: meeting the well guy, the septic guy, the appraiser; assisting with the loan. It’s marketing. Once the transaction is over, you need to continue to market to your client.

The biggest mistake agents mistake is assuming that the customer remembers “who.” They may remember Long and Foster — but not Creig Northrop. His job is to make sure the public remembers his name. Agents need to stay in touch with these people at least four times a year, whether it’s sending them a magnet, a New Year’s card or any other method. The public won’t remember Ona Beares or Creig Northrop in a year unless we remind them of who we are.

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