A real estate agent’s office that has worked primarily in Montrose and Delta counties is expanding its reach in San Juan with the opening of a new office in the Beaumont Hotel building at 505 Main Street in Ouray.
Beckie Pendergrass, Team Leader and Management Broker for the Keller Williams Mountain Group, has worked in real estate for 30 years and looks forward to being a part of the communities of Ouray and Ridgway.
Keller Williams has nearly 180,000 agents internationally, and Pendergrass believes the only thing that sets them apart is their technology.
“It’s really a technology company as much as a real estate company. So when it comes to our marketing, most of ours is through social media. We think that today is what the market is, whether you watch Zillow or Realtor.com, ”she said.
The Mountain Group is part of Keller Williams Realty, Southwest Associates, LLC based in Durango. Prior to the opening of the Ouray site, their main service areas were Montrose and Delta counties. The agency has worked on a more limited level in Ridgway, Ouray and Telluride, but Pendergrass predicts that their work in these areas will increase.
“It’s just a way for us to have a central location for Keller on this side of the mountain,” Pendergrass said, adding that Ouray’s location puts them in a better position to cover all of the south. -western Colorado.
The entire mountain team will work from the Ouray office: Pendergrass, Deanna Jakino and Hannah Samuelson from Montrose and Mark and Tammy Monroe from Ridgway.
“We look forward to being a part of the community of Ouray, the community of Ridgway,” said Pendergrass.
“We think Ouray is really ready for growth.”
The seasoned real estate agent is not worried about the drying up of the market in this rural area, noting that it has seen periods of ups and downs before. She is confident that the market remains strong on the basis of persistently low interest rates.
“It’s a sellers market,” Pendergrass said, attributing the lack of inventory in part to the fact that some people don’t want to list their homes – even though they know they can get the best price right now. – because they don’t know where they will go when they sell.
“Most people would say, ‘This is a sellers market, they should take advantage of it,” she said. “But really, they need to know where they’re going to go before they put their house on the market. And we understand it.
Pendergrass acknowledges that there are “a lot of good real estate agents” in the area, but said his team works well with others.
“We are just ready for an expansion of our office and believe we can offer a new kind of brokerage,” she said.
“We enjoy working with buyers and finding, evaluating and following buyer’s prequalification processes before making purchases and preparing them so that we know exactly what we are looking for.”
Although Keller Williams has a reputation for being a specialist in luxury real estate, and there will be an area of the office dedicated to that, Pendergrass said they would “sell anything and everything.”
Besides the focus on technology, with many Mountain Group clients only seeing the properties they buy through virtual tours, another aspect that sets them apart is their willingness to work with ‘for sale by owner’ clients. .
Mountain Group will be hosting an open house for people trying to sell their home without a full-service real estate agent. They run promotions and pay for everything needed for a successful open house, such as professional photography and staging.
Realtors receive all leads from the open house if a potential buyer is not interested in that particular home. If they find a buyer, they do all the documentation of the transaction and take a reduced commission.
The Mountain Group has many clients looking for investment property, despite rising construction costs and difficulty finding land.
“We have investors looking to do housing development. We all know there is a housing shortage, ”Pendergrass said.
