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Sold on Naples, John R. Wood realty hits 50 years in business
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John R. Wood Realtors
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Naples was another world when John R. Wood moved south from Arkansas in 1957 to sell Florida real estate.
Being a real estate agent meant getting into a four-wheel-drive Jeep with a gun safely stowed to show property out in Collier County’s vast empty swampland, and Wood made a name for himself by shuttling clients around to see their land, selling with the slogan: “Walk on it Before You Buy.”
There were about a dozen real estate offices in the small fishing village and the Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club was the north end of town. Lots in Port Royal in Naples were selling for about $15,000, or $7,500 if you built your house within a year, and when a buyer asked to look at homes for sale, they flipped through a book of black-and-white pictures.
Today, 75 to 80 percent of house hunters nationwide look online first, clicking through detailed images and information. Agents are no longer home-listing gatekeepers, but rather advisers on markets, neighborhoods and value.
During 50 years in business, John R. Wood Realtors has weathered the market’s storms and sunshine: In 2005, the company set their record for highest annual sales at $2.67 billion. As the market weakened in 2006, that number fell to $1.2 billion, but it grew again in 2007 to $1.25 billion.
This year as the company celebrates its 50th anniversary, it projects about $1.5 billion in sales.
Selling acreage
John Wood opened his Naples office in 1958 on Fifth Avenue South. His wife, Wanda, who worked as a schoolteacher for Collier County, helped out, working as a secretary and later getting her broker’s license.
“The goal was to be squeaky clean and to be very successful, and be sure that we did it the right way,” said John Wood, sitting in his son’s office at the company headquarters on U.S. 41 North on a recent weekday afternoon.
Phil Wood, the Woods’ only child, was just three years old when that first office opened.
“It was very small, with a handful of sales people. They sold almost exclusively acreage and it was all men,” Phil Wood said.
Other agents were flying their clients around in airplanes to look at land. But John Wood drove his customers through the swampland in four-wheel drive vehicles so they could see just how wet the land was.
“Nobody worried what you could do with it, you just bought it and held onto it for a year or two and sold it, and you made money because it was going up,” John Wood said.
Now, Phil Wood is president of the company, his father is chairman of the board and it’s not acreage that they focus on, but luxury homes. The Woods, along with their chief operating officer, Dottie Babcock, manage eight offices with about 500 employees, including 300 agents.
Recognizable brand, a luxury market
Phil Wood grew up in the real estate business. At 20 years old, he got his real estate license, and a few years later, sold his first house in Old Naples.
It was 1977 and the house went for $45,000; that house still stands, and it’s probably worth $750,000 today, he said.
Meanwhile, Collier County began to change dramatically. In the mid-1980s, Southwest Florida International Airport opened, Interstate 75 connected Naples to Tampa and the Ritz-Carlton and the Registry Resort, now the Naples Grande, began to draw high-end customers to Naples’ beaches.
“We suddenly were really opened up, no longer isolated and we had a lot of people very interested in purchasing property,” Phil Wood said
When he first started, the younger Wood was a pure salesman, but it wasn’t long before he became the company’s marketing champion: He wanted to create a recognizable brand.
His father remembered how one day Phil Wood asked everybody in the office for their card, and tacked them all up on a piece of cardboard.
“He puts them on a desk, and he says, ‘Look at the cards for the company,’” John Wood said. “Not a one of them were alike, they were all printed at different places, different paper, and he said, ‘Maybe we ought to start doing some marketing.’”
Phil Wood also pushed agents toward the lucrative luxury real estate market — which meant focusing on listings west of U.S. 41 North.
“If you look out on the highway you will still see the fingernails of the agents as we pulled them across,” John Wood said. “... But slowly over the years they saw the value of selling something that was three times the value for the same amount of work.”
Phil Wood, who became president of the company in 1986, called his dad the “people person.”
“He’s the one who establishes the rapport when you first come into the room,” Phil Wood said. “... I’m quiet for the first five minutes, let him tell all the jokes and get all the laughs and then I get down to business.”
John Wood said that when his son joined the company, he brought a “visionary perspective, a vision of what we ought to be doing to grow.”
“When I semi-retired in 1994 we had 40 to 50 people at most and today we have over 500,” John Wood said.
“And he’s telling a lot more jokes today,” he added, with a laugh and a look across the table to his son.
Growth
Moving into the 1990s, John R. Wood Realtors continued to focus on luxury real estate and continued to grow.
Between 1993 and 2002, the company acquired six smaller brokerages, which helped attract more, talented agents, Phil Wood said.
When John Wood decided to semi-retire, Dottie Babcock joined the business as a vice president in 1993.
“Dottie’s role has been major,” John Wood said. “She and Phil work well together. One strength complements the other and she has been key in the company’s growth.”
The 1990s set off another period of dramatic change for the company as the Internet changed how people search for homes. Suddenly anyone could look up listings online, so the agents’ role shifted toward being experts on markets, neighborhoods and value, Babcock said.
Most homebuyers make contact with agents through the Internet, and so the company has built hundreds of Web sites, John Wood said.
About 280,000 unique visitors look at those sites per month, racking up about 12 million hits monthly.
Their agents now go through a technology training program, as well as a program for real estate skills, when they join the brokerage, Babcock said.
Agents have to be adept at gathering data and explaining it to customers, she said, and they have to be able to respond quickly to clients.
Riding the market’s ups and downs
Succeeding in the real estate business for 50 years is a “tremendous accomplishment,” said Mike Hughes, vice president of Naples-based Downing-Frye Realty.
John R. Wood and Downing-Frye, founded in 1961, are two of the oldest real estate companies in Naples, Hughes said, and Phil Wood agreed.
“If anyone knows what (John R. Wood Realtors) has been through it’s Downing-Frye,” Hughes said. “... I respect everything that John and Phil and Dottie have done with their company.”
In 2006, both firms made a National Association of Realtors list of Top 100 high-performing companies nationwide, earning top five showings in different categories.
John R. Wood Realtors was No. 1 in the nation for sales volume per agent, when the company’s roughly 300 agents did an average of $7.98 million in sales during the booming 2005 market.
“Both companies have changed with the times and that’s a critical feature. You have to anticipate where this business is going,” Hughes said. “If you don’t ... you’ll fall behind. You have to change. I know at Downing-Frye we’re always looking 5, 10 years down the road ... and Phil Wood does the same.”
As for the million — or billion — dollar question about the elusive bottom of the market, “it’s so difficult to generalize,” John Wood said. “... There are signs, I think, that we’ve hit the bottom.”
His son agreed, adding that he believes the recovery has started in Naples, and that it will be one of the first places to come out of the slump.
Looking forward
The coming year will bring another milestone for the company, which plans to move into a new headquarters on Immokalee Road in summer 2008. They’ll continue to emphasize marketing, Babcock said, as well as customer service and educating their agents.
John Wood has stepped back a bit from the business, but still joins his son and Babcock for executive committee meetings.
“We call John our cheerleader, because when he walks into an office it’s like turning a light on,” Babcock said. “Everybody is suddenly upbeat and happy and laughing before he goes out the door.”
Comments
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Congratulations, 50 years of bending people over and violating them. I'm sure JR Wood and his hoity-toity uppity associates didn't have anything to do with price gouging and helping the inflated real estate market at all. They were just selling to willing and able buyers...
#1 Posted by Jadip811 on March 29, 2008 at 2:38 p.m. (Suggest removal)
What did Eleanor Roosevelt say about the wealthy?
#2 Posted by tomatoman on March 29, 2008 at 4:14 p.m. (Suggest removal)
How predictable to find these comments here.......we all put our legs into our pants one foot at a time guys. I am surely not here to defend realtors but I look forward to you all revealing your occupations so we can all provide constructive comment.
#3 Posted by sailnjed on March 29, 2008 at 5:18 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Well, John R. Wood is successful. He's staid in business for 50 years. He didn't cut and run, and I'm sure he could of a dozen times. He handed his company over to his son, and his son grew the company.
Congratulations. I admire the Woods. And I hope Jadip811 and all you other jealous complainers are as successful in your careers and as good to your families!
Hard work, clean business, stick to it. The American Dream realized by another hard working family!
#4 Posted by cornandbeans on March 29, 2008 at 5:32 p.m. (Suggest removal)
#6 sailnjed . I'm glad to have lived up to your inferior expectations. It sure appears outwardly that you are defending realtors. My Dad was a realtor here in Naples , Florida, and could have made a lot of money but he was just too blasted honest, nice and actually had a conscious.
Realtors like JR wood and Mike Miller and a host of others give them all a bad name granted. But do yourself a favor and actually go meet JR Wood Sr., even better go meet Mike Miller he is the epitome of what a realtor should NOT be.
#5 Posted by Jadip811 on March 29, 2008 at 6:03 p.m. (Suggest removal)
#7 cornandbeans Jealous? LOL Yeah that's it, I wish I could do what JR Wood's family does on a regular basis: screw people to make a quick and easy buck.
But I actually try to do right by most people and not bend them over.
Why do you think more and more people are trying to sell there homes outright then have to deal with a realtor and the exoribant fees, conditions, hassles,+ nonsense?
There is zero honor among thieves...
I take it you don't know many if any realtors huh?
They rank right up there with car salesmen, they will do what it takes to make a sale. Even go against their beliefs,morals and better judgement.
Guess you also haven't noticed the real estate fiasco across the US. Nothing to do with realtors and their greediness , right?
People that should have never been able to buy a home buying one and then when the ARMs reajjusted the realtors had long since cashed their commission checks and moved on to screw the next sucker.
What pathetic bleeding hearts you are Corn+Beans
and sailnjed.
If realtors weren't so greedy MAYBE our economy and general stability wouldn't be as bad off as it is now, MAYBE. Do you hoenstly think the Naples realtors helped the situation at all?
It is all about money TODAY, commission in my pocket TODAY, Screw tomorrow, screw the fact that this person will be foreclosed on within 36 months and the realtor knowing that BEFORE the house is even frigging sold.
#6 Posted by Jadip811 on March 29, 2008 at 6:21 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Hard work is one thing, clean business is one thing, I seriously doubt JRWood does either Cornball. He may be successful, but at what price?
He will weather this storm, he has enough realtors in his offices to keep screwing John Q. Public and not lose any sleep at night.
Realtors come and go from his office like clockwork.
His success is nothing to brag about though. His success is at the cost of his staff violating how many customers over 50 years? Is that is something to be proud of?
Kudos to JR being your hero.
That explains volumes about where your morals,values and ideals lie.
#7 Posted by Jadip811 on March 29, 2008 at 6:30 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Anyone know an estimated amount of real estate that traded hands each of the past few years? From that one could derive a ball park number of the amount of commissions paid to realtors and the cut the brokers got.
(One $2,000,000 house sold has about 6% commission yielding $120,000 in commissions!) What value was added, what service was rendered for $120,000?)
That latter amount represents how much money was sucked out of the value of homebuyers' homes. The real estate industry gets away with this because the MLS is privately held and only members have access. I think it sounds like restraint of trade and should be outlawed. Anyone up for a class action lawsuit against the Board of Realtors?
(restraint of trade - definition of restraint of trade - Illegally interfering with free marketplace participation)
#8 Posted by sailingby on March 29, 2008 at 7:22 p.m. (Suggest removal)
In general, I do not care for realtors and also do not know John Wood though wish he would have conned me into buying an overpriced lot in Port Royal back in the 60's or 70's. Forty years or so from now the next generation of losers, dumb enough to never have invested in decent property will be complaining about his son.
#9 Posted by strigiformes on March 29, 2008 at 7:35 p.m. (Suggest removal)
NDN,
Thanks for the advertisement. Your newspaper(rag) is barely useful for the bottom of my bird cage.
#10 Posted by Sanity on March 29, 2008 at 7:46 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Do you really think a business would be able to remain in business for 50 years by swindling people?
#11 Posted by melbel1038 on March 29, 2008 at 8:02 p.m. (Suggest removal)
#14 melbel1038, how about the IRS and the US gov't in general? They are honest, fair and impartial with everyone right Mel? They would never, ever swindle, and they've been around over 200 years...
#12 Posted by Jadip811 on March 29, 2008 at 9:38 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Jadip,
Thanks. I do know Mr. Wood but I have never done any deals with him so I cannot attest to his business honesty or acumen. In addition, I do not know a Mike Miller. But, it seems you have been burnt by realtors nonetheless. I guess we have all been burnt by some middleman. But 50 years sure is a long time no matter what business it is in this town; that is my point.
#13 Posted by sailnjed on March 29, 2008 at 10:39 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I use to work as an agent for Mike Miller. Used car salesman all the way! Turn and burn new agents. Glad I left that office. He ended up closing his golden gate office after he lost over half his agents, I being one. Much better off at my new office.
#14 Posted by foreclosure_agent on March 29, 2008 at 10:47 p.m. (Suggest removal)
This was a nice puff piece gone bad.
I'll side with Jadip, remembering a realtor in New Jersey who kayaked at a late hour, against the wishes of his family.
Nuff said, on my part.
#15 Posted by volochine on March 30, 2008 at 12:49 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I wonder if he still owns that 5-7 acre corner lot in Pine Ridge. That is quite a spread.
#16 Posted by baseballlives on March 30, 2008 at 1:58 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Boys, boys. This is Floriduh real estate. The gullible have bit on the dream of fast money for 100 years. And, you know what, many have succeeded. The Warren Buffet buy and hold, don't over extend type have made fortunes over the years. The greedy, less educated, less hard working, lazy get rich quick want-a-bees are the losers. And that's about 80% of Florida real estate investors over the past century.
You cry babies that can't stand the heat should get out of the fire. I can complain about realtor fees, but I can't complain about the man who is successful in collecting those fees.
Jadip calls me a liberal? I believe everyone stands on his own feet. And you, Jadip, are responsible for your bad real estate decisions, not the broker. You are the fool.
#17 Posted by cornandbeans on March 30, 2008 at 6:24 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The mafia and the IRS are bad examples since they remain in business through fear and extortion. This is a business that in free enterprise has remained in business for 50 years. Customers have CHOSEN to hire them and continue to CHOOSE to hire them. and...personally I have no stake in this. I actually worked for their biggest competition in an administrative capacity for over 10 years before starting my own technology related business. As an entrepreneur I just wanted to point out that I highly doubt that a company could be around as long as they have if they are as bad as you say.
#18 Posted by melbel1038 on March 30, 2008 at 7:13 a.m. (Suggest removal)
sailnjed and cornholia, looks can be deceiving. I've never been burned by any realtor thankfully. I own one piece of land period and hope to sell it with home in the next few years and move on, I feel it's time.
Dad was a realtor as I've previously mentioned so I got to see firsthand what the realtors do to each other and do to customers to make a sale. To make a quick buck. My Dad worked with Mike Miller several years ago when he first became a realtor, and Mike Miller was a cheap pr'ck. He would screw his own staff to make a good sale, or his b'tch of a sister would. His sister actually broke into a home because they didn't have keys to the residence to try and make a sale!!!
Very cut throat business is my point. To think JR Wood and his esteemed associates rise above that to do the honorable,fair, impartial sale is ridiculous and unrealistic to say the least. They are realtors afterall, that work on commission.
Honestly, how many people do you know that work off commission that are honest, trustworthy, good people? It is about the money and the sale, pure and simple. A good friend of mine is a car salesman, same philosphy as the realtor, make the sale, tell the customer what they want to hear, pocket the money, move on to next victim.
"Fred" screws people EVERYDAY on new and used cars for commission,
Even with a crappy economy people like realtors and car salesmen are still going to screw those that offer up their azzs.
Realtors and uneducated home buyers are one of the biggest reasons behind the real estate fiasco.
I didn't realize Cornandbeans you were so naive'.
#19 Posted by Jadip811 on March 30, 2008 at 3:49 p.m. (Suggest removal)
(This comment was removed by the site staff.)
#20 Posted by mgroll66 on March 30, 2008 at 5:12 p.m.
The firm has given refuge for many to rebuild lives whacked by divorce, bored retirement, 2nd careers, biz failures..etc.,; however, this aint Des Moines...like Ad Miller said.."Naples sells itself..let x help you buy (fill in the blank)..."
#21 Posted by Trexler on March 30, 2008 at 5:27 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Real Estate firms are just as responsible for the sub prime problems as the mortgage companies, maybe even more responsible. I guess some are good and honest people, but not many. I would almost rather deal with a used car salesman than a realtor. Are they lower than lawyers?-----maybe.
#22 Posted by Colorado on March 30, 2008 at 6:02 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I agree Colorado, some people were offered homes and able to afford them 2-3 years ago, people were making good money and able to afford a higher mortgage and afford a home loan then, but that was then this is now.
Now the market is finally correcting itself, along with the good, comes the bad...
A realtor does not care what happens to a home owner 2-5 years down the line. They've already made their commission money and moved on.
Naples will survive, however many companies have gone under, survival of the fittest it seems.
There will always be a buyer of sunshine and palm trees no doubt. But Florida is looking more like California everyday. Look at Cali today, that is the future of Florida in 10-20 years, complete with problems.
#23 Posted by Jadip811 on March 30, 2008 at 6:46 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Wow, the ditch diggers are out tonight. I mean that's what you all must be. I've never heard such poor logic used for arguements in my life. A realtor "made me buy this house or that lot." An evil loan office "made me get an adjustable rate mortgage instead of a fixed rate because I told him I wanted the lowest payment possible."
What a bunch of government please take care of me babies you are! The only person who ever forcefully takes your earnings is the IRS and local taxing authorities. If you don't like dealing with salespeople then I suggest you purchase everything you need off of craigslist. I'm sure that everything you buy will be exactly as it's described! LMAO.
#24 Posted by vyger on March 30, 2008 at 8:29 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Glad to hear your one of the intelligent ones that opted for the fixed rate Vyger. Unfortunately there are many idiots out there that didn't read the fine print and are now losing their homes because of that mistake.
They are still probably stratching their heads wondering why the mortgage payment doubled or tripled and they are soon to be homeless.
2-3 years ago if you were Tom,Dick, or Harry the mortgage companies did everything they could to get you into that home you wanted. To make the sale.
It is a different story now, tighter lending, more puckering .
And Craigslist is a great free "Ebay". But sometimes you have to dig through a lot of BS to find something good, but it can be done... LOL
The gov't sucks, everyone should always look out for Hey #1. Just a lot of really stupid people out there that really should not multipy.
#25 Posted by Jadip811 on March 31, 2008 at 5:06 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I know John R. Wood. To write these vicious words about one of the kindest, most generous and caring gentlemen ever is a sad and embarassing commentary on the individuals who participate in these comment sections.
#26 Posted by Watson on March 31, 2008 at 11:39 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Lots of ignorance being displayed here...
Yes, there are a lot of problems that relate to the deflated real estate bubble, but the solution isn't to identify the most successful person on the radar and just blame it all on them.
Let's remember that from its very first days, Naples was developed to attract wealthy Northerners to buy realestate. The fishing village thing is mostly a myth - this is well documented. Just read Doris Reynolds' book "When Peacocks were Roasted and Mullet was Fried".
We'd be facing the same problems today regardless of weather or not John R Wood was here. There are a lot of unethical real estate companies, and John R Wood Isn't one of them.
#27 Posted by NaplesResident529 on April 1, 2008 at 8:52 p.m. (Suggest removal)
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