Doolan Realty celebrates 70 years

May 2005

By Joe Emanski, Ewing Observer

Technology may have revolutionized the real estate industry, but it hasn’t changed Ewing’s Doolan Realty. Doolan was family owned and operated in 1935, and it’s family owned and operated today.

Grace Doolan was a pioneer of sorts when she started her business 70 years ago. She was, says her nephew Peter Doolan, one of the only area women in the business at that time.

Eventually her sister, Helen, came aboard, and when finally their brother Joe, Peter’s father, returned from World War II, he too became a partner in the family business.

Originally a Trenton realty, Doolan was housed on North Montgomery Street in Trenton until the 1950s, when it was moved to North Hermitage Avenue. The move to Ewing came later, in the 1970s. Today Doolan Realty is located at 1194 Parkway Ave.

Owner Peter Doolan began his career with the company in April, 1972. Until then, it hadn’t been a certainty that he would follow in the footsteps of his father and aunts. As a graduate of Mercer County Community College, Doolan went into the surveying field with a Ewing Township firm.

“I’d always been an outdoorsman and wanted to do something outdoors (for a living). Surveying sounded like it was the ticket,” he says.

But after several years, Doolan found his satisfaction with the job dwindling.

“My father had never really pushed me to get in the family business and I never remember sitting down with him and having him say he’d like me to get into the business,” Doolan says. “But I think he saw I was restless with the surveying and that’s when I finally realized my place was with him in the real estate company.”

In 1972, all three of the original Doolans were still part of day-to-day operations. Gradually they all retired, leaving the business in Peter’s hands.

And in keeping with the family tradition, Peter is not the only Doolan at the realty. Twenty years ago he asked his sister Mary Ellen get a real estate license and join him as an agent in the business. Today she is still in that role.

Nearly all industries have been changed dramatically by computer technology, but few have seen quite the upheaval that real estate has. Though nearly all prospective home buyers and sellers still retain real estate agents to help them succeed in their quests, Doolan says that today’s consumers are far more educated consumers than they were in 1972 thanks to the Internet.

“Everyone has access today,” he says. “Years ago listings were coveted by the Realtors, and there was not the level of cooperation then as we see today. Realtors used to protect their listings.”

The ubiquitous Multiple-Listing System changed all that. A computer-based information network, MLS provides exhaustive details on almost every home currently on the market, including photos, room dimensions, tax and school information and even three-dimensional tours.

Web sites such as realtor.com provide those details to anyone with Internet access, and Doolan says most buyers today do a lot of research online before they even contact a realtor.

“That makes them smarter, more selective of what they want to see,” he says. “It gives them an opportunity to make more intelligent decisions as to where they want to live and what type of home they want to buy. Also gives them a real good sense of the pricing structure of different neighborhoods so they can really focus in on what it is they want and need.”

Prospective home buyers can’t get everything they need online though. For one thing, there is a lag of several days where real estate agencies have access to listings that aren’t yet online. In a fast-paced market, days make a difference.

“Every house seems to have multiple offers on it immediately,” Doolan says. “There doesn’t seem to be any end in sight to the market where you’ve got to offer over list price just to be in contention.”

Ewing, once thought of as a less competitive market in high-demand Mercer County, is no longer for bargain shoppers. Home prices here have soared as they have in nearby Hopewell, Lawrence and Yardley, Pa.

“Now prices in Ewing are as high as the neighboring townships,” Doolan says. “I think people realized that houses may have been undervalued, but also, the economy is so strong in our area right now.”

The first thing Doolan’s 10 full-time and 10 part-time agents do when they meet with prospective home buyers is determine their financial capabilities and assess their needs, Doolan says.

“You can sit at a computer all day and look at homes online, but you really need an agent to sort through that inventory and get that buyer to a particular [property] based on what they’ve told you they’re looking for,” he adds.

Doolan feels that one of the realty’s competitive advantages is the experience levels of its agents. While many offices have constant agent turnover, he says most of Doolan’s agents have been with the agency for more than 15 and sometimes than 20 years. Another advantage is the commitment to remaining a family-owned, independent real estate business in these days of corporate consolidation. For 8 years in the 1980s, Peter Doolan owned a franchise in a major national real estate chain, but he didn’t feel the association was best for his business.

“I wanted to have control over the quality of the service we give to our clientele. We wanted to maintain our reputation, our integrity, and the quality we provide,” he says. “As an owner, managing my company, I’m concerned about every transaction. Each and every agent’s success is my success.”