No. 1 real estate team dresses the part, too by Mary Umberger

If you’re going to play on Creig Northrop’s team, you’d better dress the part.

For men, that means a suit and tie — every day.

“For women, that means be professionally dressed, though I don’t know if I can exactly define that,” said Northrop. “But you know what it is. I’ve seen jeans and shorts and, oh, my gosh, we don’t allow that kind of thing. If you want people to treat you professionally, you have to look it.”

The man is unmistakably confident about what he wants, and projecting a professional image is just one cog in the mega-wheel that is the Creig Northrop Team. Its 40 agents last year racked up more than $308 million in sales, putting the Clarksville, Md., team in the No. 1 spot on RealTrends’ annual list of the nation’s 1,000 top real estate teams, by sales volume. (See related article: “Top real estate agents featured in ‘The Thousand’ report.”)

He figured the title was slightly overdue — the team had come in second on the list for four years. But there’s no time to bask in the glow.  

The Creig Northrop Team of Long & Foster® Puts East Coast on the Real Estate Map

Real TRENDS in conjunction with LORE Magazine and The Wall Street Journal Names The Creig Northrop Team the #1 Team in the Country

Clarksville, MD – September 14, 2011- The Creig Northrop Team of Long & Foster® Real Estate, Inc., announced today that they have achieved their ultimate goal, ranking at # 1 on this year’s Top 1,000 Real Estate Professionals list by Real TRENDS in conjunction with LORE Magazine and The Wall Street Journal. This announcement puts Maryland on the real estate map as the most successful market in the country.

This recognition and milestone for The Creig Northrop Team is a true testament to the team’s perseverance, commitment and dedication to serving their customers and exceeding their expectations. In addition, this # 1 ranking highlights the potential and growth of the Maryland real estate market and The Creig Northrop Team’s ability to adapt to an ever-changing marketplace.

Creig Northrop, President of The Creig Northrop Team stated, “I am amazed and impressed for what we all have achieved and it’s an honor to be able to put the East Coast and Maryland, specifically, on the map with this recognition. The Creig Northrop Team works as a family, working together towards the same goals. We’ve been very strategic in looking at what we have to do to meet our goals. We’ve built our Team with Agents who are all hands-on and demonstrate energy and optimism towards achieving our goals and serving our clients. We’ve been realistic. While we’re large enough to serve everyone, we’re small enough to care and that will be a key objective to maintain as we head into the New Year, and will help us continue to retain the #1 spot.”

The Creig Northrop Team attributes their success to their ability to constantly evolve to meet the demands of the future, their blend of new media and proven, time-honored practices, and multi-faceted marketing initiatives including, but not limited to:

•  Their 40 Full-time Agents, who concentrate mainly within the county in which they live and sell properties through communicating their own experiences and knowledge of living in that region;
• Knowledge of current and forecasted trends;
• Quick response time;
• ‘Get It Done’ attitude and expertise in listening, following up, and following through;
• Their commitment to staying active in the community and giving back;
• Their newly redesigned website featuring cutting edge “fusion” photography, high-definition virtual tours, You Tube video, integration with social media channels, mapping, and for the first time ever, recent sold data pulled directly from the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) available for consumers;
• Automatic texts on every listing so buyers can access information 24/7, and effective use of QR codes;
• Mobile application;
• Their understanding of how to market to the various generations of buyers and sellers and what they will be most responsive towards; and
• Their company’s full service, referral network to other Top Producing Agents nationwide to help clients with challenges they face when relocating.

The Creig Northrop Team of Long & Foster Real Estate is the #1 Team in the Nation

Breaking News! It was just announced that The Creig Northrop Team of Long & Foster Real Estate is #1 team in the Nation – for all brokerages in the United States.*

“It is such an honor to be part of this amazing world class team. Without a doubt, teamwork is the secret to our success. Being # 1 requires an extreme amount of hard work and dedication. I couldn’t be more proud of every person in our organization.

Most of all, I want to thank YOU, our loyal clients. You continue to make us #1 in Maryland year after year. Now, for the first time, we are # 1 in the country. You make it fun for us to do our job. We love our work and love the opportunity we have to help people in our community. In the bigger picture, our quality of life improves when we enhance the lives of those around us. I think our team, and our clients, are different from others because of the enormous loyalty we have to each other. We really appreciate your business and feel you are part of our success. You make us #1!”

 

*According to Real Trends, Lore Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal based on team sales volume

Creig Northrop Featured in LORE Magazine

The Voice of the Triumphant Agent

Creig Northrop’s team was the No. 5 team ranked by transaction sides in the LORE/Wall Street Journal 2009 Top 400.

LORE: What challenges do you face today?
Northrop: Certainly we face the challenges of the market and financing arenas. A huge challenge is getting people qualified because of stricter guidelines and the fact that appraisers are stricter on value. It’s challenging to get people confident in the economy and the housing market. Let’s face it; once they do decide to buy they have to jump through 1000 hoops for financing. We’re seeing that financing has opened up a little more. Banks went from giving everyone a loan to giving no one a loan and that was difficult. Now, we’re in the right direction, we’ve got the confidence back up but housing prices haven’t yet stabilized but they’re in the right direction.

LORE: What are you doing to overcome these challenges?
Northrop: We’ve gotten creative and worked harder. I’ve been through every market from 17 percent interest rates to now. That experience allows me to strategize and get through the market. You’ve got to be flexible enough to adapt to market conditions, you must change your ways.

I enlisted the help of a great financing person who works for me to help me get things through the system. An in-house lender has been a big help.

We’ve also refocused our practice to buyers. I’ve got a lead generation manager and her focus is to cultivate buyers—follow up and follow through. Sales people are good at getting the lead but not maintaining and closing it. She will massage and work through that process, gets buyers what they need when they want it.

On the seller side, we’ve increased our marketing while others are decreasing their marketing. By doing so, it’s almost like a spotlight sits on all of our marketing right now. The market notices when you start cutting your advertising back, so we made it stronger, more consistent. We’ve also increased our Internet marketing

LORE: How have you revamped the business to meet the current needs of clients and customers?
Northrop: Get back to the basics by enhancing customer services. I’ve made my company leaner. I have very productive people doing a lot of things. We combined our listing and transaction coordinator positions into one position—client care coordinator. This one person takes everyone from listing to the settlement table. It’s made it beneficial on the relationship side. It’s about the future of our sales, not just today.

LORE: What do you see as the successful sales associate of the future?
Northrop: There are three different types of buyers: old school, new school and echo boomers. In order to maintain, you must adapt to all three types of buyers. Old school still reads the newspaper. With the new school, you better be all over the Web. They’re very information oriented. They gather information and they want results. The echo boomer is about instant gratification, such as texting. You must respond to texts. All of my properties have text riders on them.

The agent of the future has to learn how to deal with all sets of these three generational buyers. I think putting yourself in one market is not the wave of the future, Teams are the wave of the future. One person can’t do what is required anymore.

Knowledge is confidence, confidence is trust and trust is the sale. Learn it before you sell it so you’re confident and can earn trust. You can’t just jump in to real estate or a market niche; you must know every house on every street in your area.

Source: LORE Magazine, Tracey Velt (7/7/2009)

Thank You

The eagerly anticipated Real Estate Top 200 rankings were announced November 7, 2008 at the National Association of REALTORS®’ Annual Convention in Orlando, FL.

The Creig Northrop Team of Long & Foster Real Estate, Inc took home top honors ranking # 2 in Sales Volume by a Team, as well as # 3 in Transaction Sides by a Team in The Wall Street Journal, REAL Trends and Lore Magazine’s 3rd Annual Top 200 Real Estate Professionals.

The Northrop Team won special recognition for being the only team to achieve #2 in the nation for 3 consecutive years and also #3 in total settled transactions in the nation AND for consistent “PUSH-EVERENCE” in any market. The Team was also honored as the only Team to garner two “Encore” awards for both transactions and volume. WES FOSTER Founder, Chairman and CEO of the Long & Foster Companies, was in attendance to give a heartwarming congratulatory speech about the Team.

PUSH-everence is like perseverance, only infused with more positive energy. Recently, I had been hearing all this “perseverance, perseverance, perseverance.” I didn’t like the word. It didn’t do anything for me. I needed a word to indicate what I was looking to do next, and that was “push-everance.” Push through it.

My team and I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our Clients who have assisted us in reaching these exemplary goals! We could not have had such a successful year without your support. As always, our mission is to provide all of our clientele with extraordinary customer service.

For a link to the full article published by LORE magazine, please logon to www.northropteam.com/lore