Most businesses have faced their share of challenges during the past couple of months, but few have had a year quite as eventful as the team at RE/MAX Glacier Country.

When the COVID-19 pandemic started disrupting everyday life in the Flathead Valley, the small real estate firm was already dealing with the fallout from a fire that destroyed its Main Street office in July 2019.

More than a year and two location changes later, managing partner Mark Beck said RE/MAX Glacier Country is finally getting settled into a new office and ready to get back to business.

RE/MAX Glacier Country can now be found at 6 Sunset Plaza in North Kalispell. The company closed on the new building at the end of July 2020, just over a year after the real estate agents were smoked out of their building at 1 Main Street in downtown Kalispell.

Renovating the North Kalispell building took up the past few weeks, but Beck said the space is now ready to provide a permanent home for RE/MAX Glacier Country after a tumultuous year.

“It was a very busy year,” said Beck, who took over as managing partner at the beginning of August. “It was very stressful.”

Beck was a new agent with RE/MAX Glacier Country when the fire broke out last summer.

Neither Beck nor anyone else was inside the building at the time of the fire, which was reported around 6 a.m. on July 17, 2019. The cause of the fire was eventually deemed inconclusive.

Beck and his coworkers lost their office and all their office belongings, and they temporarily moved into a leased space at 22 Second Ave. W., still in the downtown area.

Many of the RE/MAX agents ended up working from home, which turned out to serve them well with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic months later.

“It helped us really adjust to COVID,” Beck said. “We were ahead of the game.”

The real estate agency has also made a number of other adjustments throughout the past year. Beck said RE/MAX Glacier Country will operate with an “all-new business model going forward.”

Under the new model, agents will work 100% on commission, and fees will be considerably lower than they were previously.

Luxury residences are now becoming a bigger focus for RE/MAX Glacier Country. Beck explained upward market trends will make it possible for more homes to qualify for the “RE/MAX Collection Brand” because the price threshold for that designation is going down.

And although the relocation was hardly intentional, Beck said the new location will help the RE/MAX team improve their services.

The North Kalispell office is newer, with better visibility and parking space. “Town is growing north,” Beck pointed out, so the RE/MAX team is excited to be at the center of that growth.

The new building is also well-suited for keeping business going amid a pandemic. The space has shareable offices that agents can occupy for meetings and then do the rest of their work from home, using RE/MAX’s remote cloud-based system.

RE/MAX Glacier Country currently has five independent agents—two fewer than the crew before the fire—and Beck believes the new building will give them plenty of space to expand. “The new location is going to offer a ton of opportunity for growth,” he predicted.

Reporter Bret Anne Serbin may be reached at (406)-758-4459 or bserbin@dailyinterlake.com.

Event details

To celebrate its rising from the ashes of a July 2019 fire, RE/MAX Glacier Country will hold a grand opening at the new office from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 8, with live music performed by Andrew Sweeney. RE/MAX Glacier Country is located at 6 Sunset Plaza in Kalispell.