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Date: July 28, 1993

Title: Top 20/Richard A. Weidel Realtors

The place: Trenton. The year: 1915. It was an age when women wore long skirts, men sported straw hats, and downtown traffic meant horse-driven carriages. A young man named Karl Weidel, Jr. opened an insurance agency, one of the growing service businesses in the bustling industrial city. The agency flourished, and years later, after his sons, Richard Sr. and Karl Weidel III, joined the firm, it ventured into real estate brokerage. While Richard took charge of the real estate operations, his brother Karl stayed in insurance.

Today, 78 years later, Richard A. Weidel Realtors, now based on Route 31 in Pennington, has become one of Central New Jersey”s fastest-growing residential brokers. Real Trends, a trade publication, ranks Weidel as the country”s 86th-largest residential brokerage firm. At a time when intense competition and a slow market have forced major brokerages like Coldwell Banker and Schlott to merge, Weidel is going strong. In 1990, its 300 brokers, who work out of 24 offices in Northern and Central New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania, had sales of $372 million. In 1991, though the number of sales people remained the same, the sales volume rose to $430 million, and in 1992 to $484 million. Says Richard Weidel Jr., grandson of the founder, who is now the company”s president: “As the market has declined, the productivity of our sales people has increased.”

This performance follows from a deliberate sales strategy: Weidel is changing the old real estate adage of “location, location, location” to “training, training, training.” During the past decade, the company has launched a host of other affiliated companies, including the Princeton School of Real Estate, which provides real estate education to some 450 aspiring brokers who go through it each year. The company makes a major commitment to training sales people. Newcomers first go through a two-week session, Pro Start I, and later spend 12 weeks in field training. The company”s sales people also take part in continuing education programs and one-day seminars to keep up with changes in the business. Says Weidel: “The purpose of our training programs is to increase the success of our sales people. This, in turn, improves their service to customers.”

The training strategy also makes sense because much of the competition comes from franchises like Century 21 or ERA. Weidel believes that while franchises work well in some industries, in real estate, performance cannot be easily standardized. Emphasizing training helps create a high level of minimum service that customers can expect, he says.

The addition of affiliated companies to the core brokerage business has also helped boost Weidel”s bottom line. Princeton Assurance, located in New Hope, Pa., handles property and casualty as well as title insurance, while Princeton Mortgage in Pennington wrote mortgages worth $251 million last year. Weidel has also expanded the range of the brokerage business to include such services as accounting and appraisals. Another division caters to the corporate relocation market and solicits business from companies moving into the area. “We have tried to broaden the company to become a one-stop shop for real estate and ancillary services,” says Weidel. “Though we rank 86th nationally, the number of companies that provide all the services we do is much smaller.” The affiliate companies operate as independent profit centers, which helps to increase efficiency, Weidel says. Is he preparing to launch any more affiliates? “Only if they contribute to the core brokerage business,” he replies.

During its first 78 years, says Weidel, the company grew on a “steady, conservative basis.” Until the end of World War II, the company focused on urban housing, as did most other real estate brokers. After the return of the GIs, however, urban populations began to migrate to the suburbs. Weidel claims his company was among the first to spot the trend. “We opened an office in 1959 in a local community, rather than in a city,” he says. “That allowed us to become independent, rather than having to franchise our operations.”

Weidel says the company”s goal now is to move into its second century. A major challenge, he says, is preparing for the impact of technology on real estate. “In the future, consumers will be seeking radically different services than they do today,” he says. Computers are already changing many aspects of the business, and in the future, they may help to reduce much of the paperwork that goes into closing the sale or purchase of a house. “In the future, consumers will seek convenience in service,” he says. “Speed will be crucial. Rather than resting on our laurels, we are positioning our company to prepare for tomorrow”s business.” s