Windermere Real Estate turns 40 – seattlepi.com

Seattles largest real estate company started in 1972 with eight agents in one small office in Northeast Seattle.

Forty years later, Windermere Real Estate has more than 300 offices and 7,000 agents in nine Western states: Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Hawaii, California, Utah, Arizona and Nevada. It has a 40 percent market share in the Seattle area.

“My dad’s goal was to build a real estate office where the agents were respected on the same level as other business professionals, so he made it a priority to hire people who were above all else, professional,” Windermere President OB Jacobi said of his father, Windermere founder John Jacobi, in a news release. “It was because of the quality of the people who joined Windermere that the company began to grow and thrive.”

Eight years ago, John Jacobi started passing day-to-day operations onto the next generation, which includes son OB, daughter Jill Jacobi Wood president of Windermere Services and her husband, Geoff Wood Windermeres CEO. Similarly, more than 20 independently owned Windermere offices have been transferred from parents to children in recent years.

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via Windermere Real Estate turns 40 – seattlepi.com.