Schneidmiller celebrates $1.1 billion sales year

By CRAIG NORTHRUP

Staff Writer

COEUR d’ALENE — An ample and excited crowd gathered at the Hagadone Event Center late Friday morning for a daylong celebration to honor both recent success and enduring determination during Schneidmiller Realty Coldwell Banker’s annual awards banquet.

More than 40 agents were recognized for their years of service, including Fred Sharp (who has been connected to the firm for 25 years), Carmen Myklebust (30 years) and Connie Chalich (35 years).

“What it really means is that the people here believe in what we’re doing,” Gary Schneidmiller, founder and chair of the iconic Coeur d’Alene real estate company, told The Press. “They’re long-term team players. The people here are in it for the long haul, and I think that says something to what makes them so successful.”

The yearly event was also an opportunity to recognize the company’s highest commission-earning salespeople, top commerical leasing agents, top referral-getters, rookies of the year and star performers.

“The market has been very good in North Idaho,” Schneidmiller said. “We had a fabulous year. I think our sales were in excess of $1.1 billion, which — for a market the size of Coeur d’Alene — is pretty remarkable. It makes us clearly the sales production leader in the market, as we have been for probably 35 years.”

Bob Hamrick, chair and CEO of Coldwell Banker Premier Realty out of Las Vegas, was the afternoon’s keynote guest speaker. He said he couldn’t help but notice the similarities between Coeur d’Alene and his own market.

“As I’m hearing the numbers, it’s very coincidental that our two companies are producing at rather similar levels,” Hamrick said. “We’ve both sold around $1 billion in real estate last year; they’ve sold a little bit more than $1 billion up here. The average sales price is considerably higher in Las Vegas — around $330,000 versus I think $270,000 here in Coeur d’Alene. But the fundamentals seem to be strong in both markets. There’s a lot of development taking place in Las Vegas, and it sounds like there’s a lot of good things taking place here, as well.”

The Las Vegas CEO said 2020 should promise much more of the same boom, sweet music for Realtors.

“For me, the demand remains really, really strong on the national level,” Hamrick said. “The fundamentals remain very, very strong for Las Vegas overall for residential real estate and commerical real estate. With the amount of construction taking place back home — and I think it’s pretty clear nationwide — you can see there’s been less [building] than the amount to keep up with buyer demand. So that creates a shortage which we’ve seen around the country.”

When asked how that shortage can price prospective buyers out of the market, Hamrick said Las Vegas indicates where the trend starts to eventually come back to build the economy, including low-income workers.

“You can see in Las Vegas, builders are starting to build,” he said. “A lot of the new construction in Las Vegas is residential, which … provide[s] the inventory for buyers. Wages rise. Workers go to work. It all becomes cyclical.”

Rob Brickett, general manager of Schneidmiller Realty, agreed.

“When we’re not delivering homes for sale for all the buyers coming to the area, new construction is a relief valve for that,” he said. “But [builders] haven’t even begun to come close to achieve the remedy for that problem yet. New construction is operating at about 23 percent for the market, which is a historic high. But we still have a ways to go.”

Brickett added that the housing shortage will continue for the forseeable future.

“We’re still in an under-supplied situation,” he explained. “We have a lot of wonderful buyers, but we don’t have enough opportunities for them. Said another way, we don’t have enough sellers. What’s going to happen is, that’s going to keep our listing opportunities down; it’s going to keep the prices going up. Our market time is going to continue to go down. All of these trends will continue into the new year.”

Schneidmiller said that shortage can pay dividends for Realtors and those trying to break into the business.

“Coeur d’Alene is a market with a lot of upside,” he said, “a lot of opportunity.”