Borough President James P. Molinaro, SIBOR President Mike Diaz and nearly 200 Realtors, SIBOR staff and friends were on hand on Tuesday, October 17th as the new Staten Island Board of Realtors facility at 1535 Richmond Avenue was officially opened for business. The borough president cut the ceremonial ribbon. The ceremony signified the end of a very long search for a new facility.
The Staten Island Board of Realtors home for many years on New Dorp Plaza had long ago become too small to meet the demands of the real estate school, multiple listing service and other operations which the organization runs to support the Realtors of Staten Island and surrounding communities. After a multi-year search which coincided with the real estate boom, the organization’s directors decided to sell its converted residential New Dorp facility and rent space in the professional office on 1535 Richmond Avenue. The building is also home to the Staten Island Bank and Trust division of Soverign Bank. The space became available when SI Bank and Trust was initially sold to Independence Bank, making the corporate headquarters space on the third floor of the building unnecessary. SIBOR is subletting approximately 6,800 square feet from Soverign.
Sandy Krueger, SIBOR CEO, said “We finally realized that although it would be nice to own our own facility, the lack of commercial space with the parking that we require is really beyond the means of our not-for-profit organization.” He added, “We also realized that as a not-for-profit, there was never going to be someone retiring with the accumulated wealth that owning our own building would generate and we couldn’t will it to our non-existent heirs. New York law just doesn’t permit either of those outcomes. So what was important to us was to have the professional space that our members deserve. Ownership became secondary.”
SIBOR President, Michael Diaz, said, “1535 Richmond Avenue is one of the premier office buildings on Staten Island. We believe that the largest trade organization on Staten Island, and the largest real estate school should have quality facilities to serve our members. As Realtors, we’re proud of the service we provide to the community and the new facility which is prominently situated on a major Staten Island thoroughfare will help us get the word out.”
The facility has been equipped with a state-of-the-art educational facility capable of running four simultaneous sessions. The Richmond County Real Estate Institute, now in its 26th year was the first Realtor board-owned school licensed by New York State. It provides pre-licensing courses for the public, and continuing education and designation courses for Realtors. The new facility will allow RCREI to provide a more varied selection of CE courses to Realtors who must take 22½ hours every two years to maintain their license. Beyond CE, the school, in conjunction with the National Association of Realtors and the New York State Association of Realtors provides a wide range of courses that lead to advanced designations (i.e., GRI, CRS, ABR, CCIM, etc.). Check the Education Section on SIBOREALTORS.com for more information. RCREI also has a cooperative affiliation with the Columbia Society of Real Estate Appraisers to provide Real Estate Appraiser Qualifying Courses that can also be taken for real estate CE credit. A recent addition to the curriculum is the Florida Broker’s Qualifying Course.
RECREI also provides online CE courses.
The pre-licensing courses are popular with members of the public looking for a new career. Debbie Lerner, RCREI Program Director, says “Many people come to the course thinking that real estate is easy. They learn during the 45 hour course, that by state law becomes 75 hours in 2008, that real estate is very hard work. For those who choose to go forward it can be very rewarding, but it’s not for everybody. We typically put 800 people through the course each year.”
The new facility also houses the Staten Island Multiple Listing Service, owned and operated by the Staten Island Board of Realtors. One of the ways that SIBOR helps to create a healthy local marketplace is by administering the SIMLS. Unlike most other industries, Realtors don’t have a store stocked with inventory for sale. Any one company on Staten Island only has a very small percentage of the available listings for sale at any given time. And buyers are also distributed across the nearly three hundred real estate companies. The MLS serves a valuable service in linking listing brokers with selling brokers to make the entire inventory available to all potential buyers. This exposure aids both buyers and sellers by ensuring that the right buyer will have access to his/her ideal property. The MLS is a service run by SIBOR for its member brokers. It is not accessible to the public. However, many brokers make the inventory available for viewing on their websites. SIBOR also allows the public to see portions of each listing on its SIBOREALTORS.com website where the public can also find lists of member firms, agents and open houses.
According to Mike Diaz, broker and SIBOR President, “Without the MLS the real estate marketplace would be chaos. Buyers would have to search everywhere to ensure that they were seeing all of the available inventory. Sellers would never be sure that their properties were being properly exposed to the marketplace. And Realtors jobs would be much, much more difficult. I entered this business before the days of the MLS, and believe me this is better, for everybody!”
As more and more real estate marketing moves to the internet, SIBOR is making larger and larger investments in the internet as well. SIBOREALTORS.com is your Realtor website. It has been heavily promoted over the last two years. You saw it on the back of State Island buses and on bus shelters. It’s at the ferry terminal and for the next year will be on a prominent billboard on the Gowanus Expressway in Brooklyn as travelers approach the Verazzano Narrows Bridge. Realtors can take advantage of the investments being made by SIBOR by making sure they update their free webpage on SIBOREALTORS.com (this is done in the MLS system) and by ensuring that all open houses are listed there (also done through the MLS).
The new space has been operational since September, but is still being completed. The Staten Island Museum has partnered with SIBOR to display works of Staten Island artists on the walls at 1535 Richmond Avenue. All members are encouraged to come and see your new Realtor home.
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