Principal Broker

Providing creative, out-of-the-box real estate support that is essential in these essential times.

Experience and Background

Jeff's extensive and diversified career includes business and organizational experience that spans real estate,  economic development, business relocation, education, and technology.

He has filled a number of roles throughout the western states, especially in Oregon through economic development and infrastructure projects for the Governor's office. Highlights include: managing millions in community development funding, serving on major industry boards, recruiting a 600-seat customer support center to Klamath Falls and developing a national award-winning project that brought fiber optics to the region. He's a trained and certified facilitator and mediator and remains politically active to ensure that individual property rights are upheld and businesses who need assistance in navigating government bureaucracy or defending themselves from government's sometimes harmful interventions are supported.

Jeff's clients appreciate his breadth of knowledge about the area, Oregon issues, business practices, and connections to business assistance resources. Although he first became a real estate agent 26 years ago, his varied professional experience sets him apart from other agents who have done little besides residential real estate sales.  He goes the "extra mile" to connect new residents and businesses with Klamath society and activities.

Special Skills

Jeff is an avid photographer and graphic designer. Typically, agents write ad text and forward it to workers at sign shops, newspapers or magazines that create ads for them. Jeff is the only agent in the area that designs his own marketing materials, using the same high-end software that nearly all design and publishing entities use. Anyone who sees property photographs Jeff takes notices the higher quality. A picture is worth a thousand words and a good image will get a property noticed above all others. Good design sends a strong, easy to understand message. Look at any ads put out by competitors and compare them to Jeff's work. The difference is evident.

Periodically Jeff designs and publishes entire magazines to create a more positive venue for advertising his properties. Over the past several years he has engaged in a number of projects designed to generate a  feel-good quality of excitement and action that led to sales by offsetting the negative shock-value character of traditional newspapers. He also owns a number of websites designed to promote the area.

Other Activities

Client rapport is a very important component of the sales process. People like to work with those who share common interests, activities, or hobbies.

Just about anyone who visits or lives in Klamath loves outdoor activities. It's no wonder since the area receives an average of 300 days of sunshine per year. His experience in successfully marketing property with Eagle Crest and Running Y Resorts showed him how important lifestyle can be in assisting buyers with purchasing decisions. An agent that exemplifies the optimum lifestyle choices in an area attracts the same. This dynamic approach works equally well with business and residential clients alike.

Jeff is an avid outdoor enthusiast and has explored all of the best places to visit in the area as well as global destinations in support of hobbies such as scuba diving. He is a licensed pilot, owns a boat, a canoe, a mountain bike, a motorcycle, and ATVs. Just about anything a client asks about, Jeff can discuss with intimate detail and provide advice and guidance for those interested in new journeys in the Klamath region.

Administrative Style

The real estate industry is filled with psychological ploys and pressure tactics that are used on sellers and buyers alike. When offices aggregate as many agents as possible and grab as many listings as they can, the result is a sweat shop where management pressures lead to widespread adoption of such methods. In fact, many offices encourage or require such training. Jeff has seen it all, but he doesn't play those games. He strongly believes that providing the best and most creative visibility for properties is the best formula for operating a real estate company. Providing guidance and information without pressure-tactics is the best way to enjoy this work. Fostering such a win-win approach minimizes conflicts through the closing process, leading to more sales closing.

Jeff founded 541 Realty in 2006, after a successful stint at a RE/MAX franchise in Klamath Falls when his sales volume positioned him in the top 10% grossing agents in Oregon and he placed in the top 10% of all RE/MAX agents nationwide.

Ironically, his success had nothing to do with RE/MAX. "I was paying them $2,000 a month to use the name and hang my license in their office, but I never received any sort of boost from the association. Every sale I made resulted from how I marketed property on my own and how I engaged clients. Many leads were forwarded to me from their centralized system, but they were all junk! Not a single lead that came from from that franchise's marketing activity ever led to a purchase."

Indeed, working within a national real estate franchise provided valuable insight for what would become a more successful marketing model under 541 Realty.

"I noticed that the national franchises operating in my area (RE/MAX, Coldwell Banker, Century 21, and John L. Scott) all used the same strategies to manipulate agents and sellers into funding their national brand to the exclusion of local sales efforts. It is unfortunate that the franchises consume so much capital that prioritizes their logo and brand before the properties they represent."

Rather than feeding ineffective national bureaucracies, Jeff felt it would be better to focus his time and effort on developing a local brand that made sense and worked better to bring buyers and sellers together.

"People don't relocate or invest because they see a property on a national site," Jeff says, "They decide on a location for other reasons, so the most efficient use of resources is to do an extremely good job capturing the attention of people seeking local information. Ultimately, anyone interested in a community enough to buy property will be conducting their diligence locally. It has always worked better for me to shake a hand, rather than chase a cloud."

Successful marketing builds on simple principles, such as using a business name that is easy to spell and remember. "I always thought it was arrogant to name a real estate company after a founder. Marketing research shows it is easier to remember places or things than names of people. In addition, common words are easier to spell than people names are."

Jeff created an agency name from the easiest combination he could conceive of: the local area code with the word "realty." Almost everyone makes a phone call to an area prior to visiting. They are continuously exposed to those three short numbers in the calling prefix, which makes it one of the few number sequences that people remember. "The name provides an automatic advantage and I can't figure out why no one thought of it before. If a client has dialed a number in eastern Oregon, they can easily remember the company name."

Jeff also discovered that he could secure the best phone number for marketing property in the greater part of Oregon. (503 is used in the Portland area, 541 most everywhere else). He determined the best vanity number to support the company name: 541-4REALTY (541-473-2589), tracked down the business using it and purchased it from them. "It was a mystery to me why no agency in Oregon had secured that number! It was so simple and has been so effective."

Technology is where most real estate offices are deficient and the Internet has become the most important resource for marketing support. National franchises spend large sums of money on commercials touting the effectiveness of their national websites. However, not all is what it seems.

"The franchises talk a good talk, but their methods are extremely obsolete in the realm of the Internet."

Examples of what not to do are everywhere. Listings secured by franchises go into a central system and can only be found after embarking on a convoluted route involving many mouse clicks and advertising distractions. Tossing a property in a bin with hundreds of thousands of other properties is like adding more needles to a haystack. There's always a better deal to be found, and national sites are automatically more complicated to navigate. They generate too many distractions from the property originally sought and become less effective as a result.

To counter the problems associated with the national website repositories, most franchisees establish local sites. Each office is required to have a somewhat unique name, and many name the franchisee office after the owner. What they end up with is a web site name so long and confusing that customers are reluctant to type it in, or worse, can't remember in the first place. No local franchise has a local website that matches their company name.

Before listing with any agency, check to see if the company name and website name match. Is the web name easy to remember? Are the photos of high quality? Do they create real virtual tours and not a slide show masquerading as a virtual tour?

What is the one word that best sums up the usefulness of a real estate agency? MARKETING.

If a real estate company can't conquer the simple basics of marketing, how they be good at marketing at all?

The prevailing philosophy of the founder is to be the best at marketing. By virtue of the name, phone number and website, 541 Realty demonstrates mastery of the simple and most crucial elements of real estate representation. 541 Realty uses sophisticated tools to build far simpler-looking, but more effective marketing campaigns, unlike any agency in the region.

Don't be confused by the rhetoric of the franchises. Use your brain and make the logical choice for a partner in real estate: choose 541 Realty.

541 REALTY - 1414 East Main Street, Klamath Falls, OR 97601