When Mr. Carpenter died, his secretary and her husband, Eileen and Bob Gibbs, bought the company and added their personal touch to its marketing approach. Bob Gibbs was a familiar sight in downtown Oak Park as he made his daily rounds checking out properties and maintaining contacts; he was referred to as “the mayor of downtown Oak Park.”
Today, Eileen’s son-in-law, Al Rossell, is managing broker and has, in turn, brought his own touch to Carpenter’s marketing strategy:
Location: Location is just as important in marketing a real estate brokerage as it is in marketing a property. Jack Carpenter, Realtors, for decades, has been the most visible of local real estate firms through its several locations in downtown Oak Park. The newest location on the southeast corner of 200 S. Marion is highly visible morning and night to passengers of the Lake St. El and Metra trains a block away; to the hundreds of customers daily at the four popular restaurants within a block and to guests at the Carleton Hotel across the street who are relocating to Oak Park.
As a result, Jack Carpenter enjoys more drop-in traffic than any other real estate office, from serious lookers to local residents walking their dogs.
Experience:: Jack Carpenter has for decades been closely involved in the marketing, management and conversion of multi-unit buildings. Principals of Jack Carpenter were among the first converters of apartment buildings in Oak Park in the 1980’s. With a licensed appraiser in the office, we are able to keep current with prices and trends in the Oak Park area and throughout Chicagoland, especially in the extremely active neighborhoods on Chicago’s north side. We are in regular contact with developers who are looking for buildings to be converted or land for development.
Carpenter Country: Among Al Rossell’s marketing innovations was the slogan “Carpenter Country”, which was familiar as a sign atop village taxis for years. The “Carpenter Country” magazine was one of the first single-office publications with listings and ads. These tools were used as long as they were cost-effective and have been replaced in recent years by other innovations.
One of the most successful was a $12,000 award winning audio-visual presentation geared to families relocating to Oak Park and River Forest. Plans are to adapt the presentation to be shown on a monitor in one of the front windows, where current listings are now projected, reformatting it into a virtual tour format for electronic marketing.
The current emphasis, of course, is to employ all aspects of computer technology in marketing the company and its listings and to better serve our customers. Jack Carpenter, Realtors has invested heavily in an office computer network and in a presence on the Internet, which has changed the way people buy and sell real estate.
Besides the traditional approaches to marketing homes, Jack Carpenter, Realtors also utilizes the following additional methods to provide the greatest exposure possible.
- Listing the property on the Multiple Listing Service (MRED) with nearly 40,000 active agents.
- Listing on all the major real estate data web sites.
- Virtual Tours.
- Several Internet “agent” sites in addition to our consumer oriented www.jackcarpenter.com.
- 24 hour continuous slide show program of our listings in our highly visible location.
- All agents of the firm have numerous years of experience and knowledge to help assist their clients.