56

Vero Beach 32963 / August 1, 2013

Your Vero Beach Newsweekly

REAL ESTATE

Sorensen on track for third record-breaking year

BY STEVEN M. THOMAS Staff Writer

Dale Sorensen Real Estate continues to dominate home sales on the island and throughout Indian River County in 2013, closing more transactions than its three nearest competitors combined. As of July 25, Sorensens 80 agents

had sold $244 million worth of real estate in the county, $40 million more than they had sold by the same date in 2012. The 19.5-percent increase puts the company on track for a third consecutive recording-breaking year. Our island sales are up nearly 10 percent, says Dale Sorensen, Jr., managing partner of the familyowned firm. Including sales on

The Trusted Name in Real Estate Since 1949

G IN LI ST LI ST IN G

Elizabeth Sorensen, Dale Sorensen Jr., Matilde Sorensen and Dale Sorensen Sr.

Photo by benjamin hager

MOORINGS
Riverfront, bring your own boat! Charming 3BR/4.5BA tastefully done! Private, best buy! $1,195,000 (#138219) Karl Dietrich 772-538-3453

BAYTREE OCEAN VILLAS

3BR/3BA oceanfront villa, master suite & living areas with beach view balconies. $905,000 (#138541) Judy Freni 772-532-4892

SOUTH BEACH Village By The Sea

3BR/3.5BA, elevator. Private beach access. $795,000 (#136588) Charlotte Terry 772-538-2388 Barbara Parent 772-633-3027

SEA FOREST COURT

2 Story 3BR/4BA across from ocean, htd. pool. $619,000 (#137125) Charlotte Terry 772-538-2388 Barbara Parent 772-633-3027

North Hutchinson and land sales, we have sold $172 million so far this year on the island. The exact number is $172,469,810, as of July 25, which represents a $15.3-million increase compared to last year at this time. If anything, the companys marketshare growth is even more impressive. Our market share in Indian River County in 2009 was 12 percent, says Sorensen. Now, it is 30 percent. Our market share in the 32963 area is 29 percent so far this year. If you include home sales on North Hutchinson, we have a 31-percent share of island sales. Sorensen attributes the companys success to the quality of its agents. The hard work of our sales associates and the trust the community has clearly placed in them to get the job done is the key, he says. We have four of the top 10 agents in the county and more than 30 percent of the top 100. Sally Woods, who moved to So-

rensen from another brokerage in 2008, typifies the kind of talented, top-producing agent Dale Jr. is talking about. I had 13 closings in a three-week period recently, Woods says, sounding slightly amazed. It has been surprisingly busy compared to previous summers, says Sorensen. At one of our weekly sales meetings, there were nine new contracts at Oceanique, one of them for $900,000. I was shocked at that level of activity in one community. Oceanique is a 12-story, two-tower condominium development with 144 residences on the southern barrier island where George Prescott heads an on-site Sorensen sales team. Bobbie Holt, a top-producing agent who manages Sorensens downtown office, believes the companys success is due to three things: marketing, marketing and more marketing. Dale Sorensen Real Estate is a

EW

Enjoy ocean & city views from the floor to the ceiling windows & wraparound balcony. $395,000 (#135173) Lois Work 772-559-2399

VILLAGE SPIRES

EW

VERO BEACH ESTATES

Central Beach Bungalow, updated 2/1, htd. pool. $349,000 (#137758) Charlotte Terry 772-538-2388 Barbara Parent 772-633-3027

2901 Ocean Drive, Vero Beach, FL 32963 772-231-6509 www.alexmacwilliam.com

Your Vero Beach Newsweekly

Vero Beach 32963 / August 1, 2013

57

REAL ESTATE
marketing machine, says Holt. And Dale Jr. is a marketing genius. He has figured out a way to take a small local company and make it a national brand. We have extensive training for our agents, a strong mentoring program and more than 900 websites to showcase our properties. Many agencies offer multiple marketing channels, but they charge agents for including their listings. Our agents get local, national and international advertising at no cost. When Dale Sorensen takes a listing, it uses its entire horsepower to sell the listing. We have a marketing department and the marketing department works closely with agents to expose a property to a targeted audience. Even though I oversee daily operations, I lean more toward the marketing side, says Dale Sorensen, Jr. I see my role as implementing tools for the agents to help them grow their business. We have a marketing program that leaves no stone unturned. Effective use of technology is another key to the companys success, according to Sorensen. The biggest initiative we rolled out in the past six months is a suite of technological tools for the agents, he says. It includes a back-end intranet and personal website for every single agent with an IDX lead management tool, contact management tool and marketing campaigns all built into the system. We have had the company that created it come down from Oregon twice to train the agents. They started with several large-group training sessions and then came back and did follow-up training with smaller groups. I think it is important for us to help the agents learn to use the tools and we are committed to bring back the trainer every three months to provide updates on evolving technology. One thing we like best about these new tools and the company we are using is they constantly update the technology. Instead of paying for a website that becomes obsolete in a couple of years and then having to pay for a new one, ours are continually upgraded with new features. One cool new feature lets agents put in the address of a clients property and immediately generate market reports that show everything that has happened in the area surrounding that property. The agent can make the area searched larger or smaller as needed and see sold data, price changes and other information. Woods says she joined Dale Sorensen Real Estate because of the companys long-range vision and its fresh, bold approach, solid business planning and dedication to capitalizing on the latest trends in technology. From the beginning, I was impressed with Dale Sorensen Jr.s forthright manner and his clear articulation of the direction he wants to take the company, says Woods, who has sold more than $300 million worth of real estate in her career. Founded 34 years ago by husband and wife team Dale Sorensen, Sr. and Matilde Sorensen in what Matilde calls a teeny, tiny office on Beachland, Dale Sorensen Real Estate now has three primary offices with smaller satellite offices at Oceanique and Ocean Park, the luxury condominium development on the south side of Humiston Park. After years of slow steady growth, the companys business basically exploded at the end of the last decade, growing from $127 million in 2009 to $181 million in 2010 to $300 million in Indian River County in 2011. Its crazy, Dale Jr. said at the end of 2011. It is hard for me to explain sometimes. When the history books are written, this will be the deepest and longest downturn in the real estate market ever which makes it tough to understand how we grew sales from $127 million in 2009 to more than $300 million and had our best year in company history in 2011. I believe some of it is something intangible that is hard to put your finger on intangibles like momentum and energy and synergy. The companys success continued in 2012 when its agents listed or sold more than 1,100 properties worth $335 million in Indian River County. Now, in 2013, Sorensen is on its way to another record-breaking year. If the 19.5-percent sales increase holds up to the end of the year, the company could easily top $400 million in sales in IRC with tens of millions more on North Hutchinson Island in St. Lucie County. I think Dales way of marketing, giving us the tools to sell, is what has made the difference, says Matilde. There is no other reason for this level of success that makes sense. That may sound like a typical mother who is proud of her son, but I really mean it.

Buyers look to ARMs as fixed rates climb

BY Kathleen M. Howley and Prashant Gopal Bloomberg News

Jung Lim plans to offset the cost of rising mortgage rates by using an adjustable-rate loan to buy a home for his expanding family. For the California endodontist, the money hell save makes up for the ARMs risky reputation. Lim, 38, whose wife is expecting a second child in December, is leaving a two-bedroom condo in Los Angeless Hancock Park to buy a four-bedroom house in the citys Sherman Oaks neighborhood for $1.12 million. His lender offered him a rate for an adjustable mortgage that is about a percentage point cheaper than a fixed loan. If I could have gotten a 30-year fixed at the interest rate Im getting the ARM for, I would have felt a lot more comfortable, said Lim, whos also a professor of endodontics at the University of California, Los Angeles. But Im hoping to refinance in five years or less. And well be in the house for about 10 years so we could also sell. Hopefully prices have bottomed so we wont be underwater then.

In the second year of the U.S. housing recovery, the loans that helped trigger the housing bust are making a comeback. Applications in late June rose to the highest level since 2008 after the Federal Reserve sent fixed rates surging by signaling it may curtail bond buying credited with pushing borrowing costs to the cheapest on record. The average 30-year fixedrate mortgage jumped 1.2 percentage points in mid-July from May to the highest level in two years, adding about $200 a month to payments on a $300,000 mortgage. Weve seen a shift in the way people look at adjustable-rate mortgages, said Cameron Findlay, chief economist of Discover Financial Services home-loan unit. Theyre still skeptical about using ARMs, given the role they played in the financial crisis, but the sticker shock of what fixed rates have done is making them look for alternatives. ARMs, loans with interest rates that adjust after initial fixed periods, usually of five, seven or 10 years, helped fuel the housing bubble and contributed to
CONTINUED ON PAGE 58