NATIONAL NEWS

To Italians, the word Andare means “to go” or “to work.” To Intero Real Estate Services agents, Andare means a new, innovative and highly effective alternative to the traditional Real Estate office design.

Tom Tognoli, chief operations officer and founder of Intero, believes that Intero’s Andare offices meet the needs of modern Real Estate agents, who are constantly on the go. Intero has tossed aside the principles of a traditional Real Estate office—which Tom describes as a large, cubicle-oriented environment—for a smaller, technology-rich, and more eco-friendly Real Estate office. “Times have changed,” says Tom, “and so has the Real Estate business.”

“Twenty years ago, agents didn’t have fax machines, e-mail, PDAs, and all the things we’ve come to rely on today,” says Tom. “They used their office a lot more. But today’s agents are very much outside salespeople. They have tablet PCs and PDAs and can work from anywhere. They don’t need cubicles anymore.”

Tom points out that many Real Estate brokerages continue to spend money on large, beautiful offices that are empty most of the time. “They’ve got 10,000 square feet of space, but you’ll rarely find more than 10 percent of an office’s sales force in there at any given time,” he says. “As an agent, you only need to be in the office for training or a meeting. Even when it comes to meetings, most of them are taking place in Starbucks now versus the office. The rest of the time you need to be out there, interacting with your clients.”

In an effort to accommodate the needs of today’s modern agents, Intero designed Andare offices that are smaller in size—the average office ranges from 1,000 to 3,000 square feet—and boast an energy- and cost-efficient design. Tom says they reduce build-out costs by as much as 70 percent in comparison to larger, traditional offices.

What Intero lacks in space, it makes up for in location and quality. The company opened its flagship Intero Andare office in Silicon Valley’s upscale Santana Row retail community in early 2007. Since then, the company has opened numerous Intero Andare offices, in Carmel, San Jose, Menlo Park, Santa Cruz and Tahoe, with more than 135 agents working in these offices. The offices are all located in California but this is not all they have in common. All of the offices are smaller offices in high-profile, heavily trafficked locations. “Santana Row is a great example of this,” says Tom. “It’s a very hip, modern office in an area that gets as many as 20,000 visitors each day. That’s a lot of potential customers for our agents.”

Tom likens the design of the Intero Andare office to a high-end art gallery, as opposed to a large, impersonal Real Estate office, due to Andare’s polished concrete floors, vaulted ceilings and floor-to-ceiling glass walls. Each office is minimalist and modern in style, he adds. Intero ditched cubicles for an open floor plan that features leather sofas and chairs, café-style tables, and a large central workspace that’s equipped with a power and data conduit from the ceiling. Agents have access to small private offices as needed, but don’t have assigned cubicles.

Each of the Andare offices uses cutting-edge technology, including tablet PCs, keyless entry, Voice Over IP (VoIP), flat-screen plasma TVs, and a high-speed Wi-Fi network. The offices include Web-based transaction management software that gives agents the ability to manage entire client files online and eliminate the need for paper and storage. Clients can sign directly to a PDF and those signatures are as secure and official as a contract on paper. Intero then stores the files securely online where they remain available to access down the road from any location. “It’s what the future of Real Estate will be,” says Tom.

Intero also builds strategic relationships with resort communities to provide unique offerings for its agents. The front of an Intero Andare office is a retail-display glass window, behind which are mounted high-definition flat-screen TVs where homes and resort communities are showcased. “Agents can take advantage of the traffic and type of people who come to our high-end locations,” says Tom. “Resort communities market through Intero and agents can collect fees of up to 3 percent on these sales.”

Tom says that Intero’s agents embrace this new concept because it gives them access to cutting-edge technology and a space that meets their needs and helps them stay competitive. “If you’re encouraging agents to hunker down in an office cubicle, you’re really doing them a disservice,” he warns. “By encouraging them to get out there and work flesh-to-flesh with clients, you’re enabling them to be successful and competitive in today’s market.”

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