One of the few bright spots in this slumping housing market is the demand for real estate pros who can help a relocating CEO or engineer shed one home and find another.
Fulfilling that demand has united Century 21 Clemens & Sons Realty, one of the Hartford area’s biggest real estate brokers, with Cartus Corp., one of the world’s largest corporate relocation networks.
The benefits to both are hard to miss. For Cartus, based in Danbury, Clemens & Sons adds to its network of more than 300 principal and 600 associate brokers available to serve more than 1,400 corporate clients, many of them Fortune 500 companies.
By teaming with Cartus, Clemens & Sons gains another pipeline by which it can match buyers with sellers.
“It’s something we looked at and decided it was another service we could offer,’’ said Curtis Clemens Sr., founder and president of Clemens & Sons Realty. Based in Rocky Hill, the brokerage also has offices in West Hartford, Glastonbury and South Windsor.
Relocation services always have been a part of Clemens & Sons’ business model, said Clemens. He said he decided that his company was at a size and stage where a Cartus affiliation could be an asset.
His timing was right. Cartus had an opening after Connecticut broker William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty ended its eight-year affiliation, said Deborah Williams, Cartus’ senior vice president for broker services.
For the client’s benefit, Cartus maintains at least two broker affiliates in its relocation markets, Williams said.
A Cartus affiliation isn’t easy — or cheap. Partly to protect its reputation for quality and to weed out bad apples, initially firms and their brokers undergo a thorough background check along with extensive training into the basics and nuances of relocation services, Williams said.
Annual fees to remain in the network range from $2,500 to $90,000, depending on, among other factors, the size of the brokerage firm and the market it serves, she said.
Clemens & Sons will start out as an associate broker, with Cartus evaluating its performance in serving clients referred to it by the network, Williams said. Eventually, Clemens & Sons could become a principal broker, lining up for a bigger slice of business, she said.
Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate, Cartus’ other key Hartford area relocation affiliate the past 12 years, is a principal.
Â
West Hartford lawyer moving
West Hartford attorney Matt Conway has purchased an office building at 643 Prospect Ave., just blocks from his current office on Farmington Avenue, to house his law practice.
Conway, principal in Conway and Stoughton LLP, paid $717,000 for the three-story building that was a house before being converted to office space years ago.
Conway plans within the next two months to move his firm to its new quarters from its current address at 818 Farmington Ave., according to broker Lawrence Levere of Sentry Commercial Real Estate, who represented Conway in the transaction.
Conway’s Hawks Holdings LLC bought the building from 643 Prospect Avenue LLC on March 31. The building’s previous owner, architects Maier Design Group, has since relocated to downtown Hartford.
Â
Â
Got real estate news? Deal Watch wants to hear from you. E-mail your information to gseay@hartfordbusiness.com.
Greg Seay is the Hartford Business Journal Web editor.
