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The end of a wobbly year in real estate may not seem like a time to expand the number of offices.

Several local agents, however, are adding offices in anticipation of a 2008 real estate recovery.

On Fifth Avenue South in Naples, the Hamburg-based agency Engel & Voelkers will establish a new storefront in the coming weeks.

Down the road, Downing-Frye grew from three to five Naples offices with new locations in the Third Street South area in early December.

And come next spring, John R. Wood will be expanding as well.

“With the kind of year we’ve gone through in 2007, the tendency is to get lean and mean,” said Marlene Graham, who borrowed against her home to open the new Downing-Frye offices.

Nearly three-quarters of real estate firms in Florida have only one office.

“I go the other way, I see a huge turn-around in the market, and we wanted to be ready for it,” she said.

The risk of being wrong on the timing is always present, the agency owners admit.

The Florida Association of Realtors reported a 29 percent decrease in existing home sales from October 2006 to October this year. Existing condo sales dropped 20 percent.

“The worst part was getting in touch with reality. It took a while for everybody – including us in real estate – to get in touch with (the fact) that the market really has changed,” Engel & Voelkers Naples office Managing Partner Maury Dailey said.

Dailey, after two decades in commercial real estate, purchased a franchise of the global company in December 2006.

The timing, for Graham and Dailey, was essential. They consider their new offices a vote of confidence in the future of the market, and wanted to get operations running early in the season to ride the wave of domestic and foreign visitors – especially the sidewalk traffic.

The approaches to lure traffic in the bustling downtown area, however, differ.

Engel & Voelkers “boutique” will have clean lines, no clutter, and windows free of property ads.

“When you’re outside and look in our office, you will see who is in the office or how many (people) are in the office, what the office looks like,” Dailey said.

The coffee, he added, will be served in china – not Styrofoam – per the company’s mandate.

With the exchange rate favoring European investors now, he hopes the style will appeal to high-end foreign clients.

The minimalist approach, a standard for the company in its 330 offices around the world, is the first line of action.

To this end, there will be no personalization of the desks. Associates will be able to use the office as a resource for serving clients – but there will be no photos of the kids frocking near the pier, or the teddy bear from last Valentine’s Day.

“We don’t want somebody from another culture who comes into our office and gets offended. We’re trying to welcome the community so we’ll keep it is as plain and simple as possible,” Dailey said.

At Downing-Frye, however, clean lines give way to stacks and racks of tourism brochures and local magazines.

The emphasis is on promoting tourism as much as it is on selling properties, said Graham, a former travel writer.

The attempt is to get visitors to fall in love with Naples.

“It’s always been my belief to sell real estate second, and community first,” Graham said. “If they like the community, they’ll want to pick a roof to put over their heads.”

She keeps the office doors open until 10:30 p.m. on Fifth Avenue South.

On a Friday evening, several couples with babies and puppies browse the tourism brochures and listings, then take a break to sit on the chairs in front of the office. Tourists come in to use the free Internet to print out boarding passes daily.

Lately, she said, the bulk of foreign tourists has been from Canada.

“It’s no secret. The exchange rate has had a nice influence on our market here,” Downing-Frye general manager Mike Hughes said. “I think a lot of people recognize the current market as a rare opportunity.”

It’s the market environment Dailey also prognosticates – and hopes – will happen soon.

“It won’t actually get out into the reporting until after the fact (but) that’s going to start happening this season I believe – that the best properties are going to be picked up by Europeans or really sharp Americans that realize we’ve got to be close, or we’ve already bottomed out.”

A $50,000 down payment on a property early this year equaled 37,920 euros. European investors can now make the same purchase with 34,819 euros – an 8 percent difference.

Although Dailey reiterates that Engel & Voelkers caters to high-end buyers, the median sales price of homes purchased by foreign buyers in Florida last year was $352,400, according to the Florida Association of Realtors. Only 11 percent of sales to foreigners were over $1 million.

He still intends to carve a place in the niche market, and once the exchange rate flips, he and his 25 associates will be in a position to sell real estate abroad to local buyers.

Whether it’s stripping the office of clutter like Dailey plans, or stuffing it with souvenirs and advice on the community like Graham, “the key is being well-positioned for the future,” Downing-Frye’s Hughes emphasized.

Adding to the positive outlook, Bonnie Williams of John R. Wood’s marketing team said the firm will expand its offices, tentatively in the spring.

“A couple of years ago, everybody had this sense that ‘All I need to do is put a sign in the yard and someone is going to give me (the price) I want’,” Dailey said. “I think that mentality really hurt the market and hurt everybody.

“We’re still a little below (those year-to-year figures) but actually recovering,” he added. “I think we’ll see those values again, but it’ll take time to get there.”

Contact Victoria Macchi at vmmacchi@gmail.com