Since 1988, Long & Foster, Realtors' Centreville branch has operated out of a 4,800-square-foot office in the Centreville Square Shopping Center. A year ago, it took over another space to have 6,000 square feet total.
But things are definitely changing. Tuesday morning, Long & Foster broke ground on a new, three-story, 33,000-square-foot building of its own. It will be along Route 28 in Centreville, across the highway from McDonald's and the Centreville Multiplex Cinemas.
"In the new office, we'll add a settlement company and an insurance division — Long & Foster General Brokerage Insurance," said Pat Lawless, co-office manager with Don DeBragga. These services — combined with the real-estate sales office, a Prosperity Mortgage loan officer and an on-site property manager — will greatly benefit the clients.
"They won't have to run all over town," said Lawless. "It's one-stop shopping — they can get everything they need here."
Long & Foster has 86 real-estate agents, plus six other employees, but the larger office will give the company more room to add more agents. And Long & Foster's in-house construction department is designing and building it.
"It'll be all brick, in the style of historic Williamsburg," said Lawless. "It should be a beautiful building."
Each floor will be 11,000 square feet. The first level will contain the mortgage, settlement and insurance sections, plus meeting rooms. There'll even be potential space on that level for a real-estate school to train new real-estate agents. The middle level will feature Long & Foster's full-service sales office, and the third level will house a Long & Foster corporate unit.
Lawless says the new facility will have some innovative changes. "We've visited other offices and taken the best of what we've seen to our design team," she said. "It'll be a state-of-the-art office building, complete with a fancy, new, computer-driven phone system." And of course, it will also have the latest in computer technology, with easy access to information about homes for sale.
Currently, Lawless and DeBragga share an office, so they're both looking forward to getting into their new digs. Said Lawless: "We'll be quite pleased to be able to meet with people in a not-so-crowded atmosphere."
Dignitaries at Tuesday morning's groundbreaking included Supervisor Michael R. Frey (R-Sully) and Long & Foster executive Brenda Shipplett. The new office is slated to open during summer 2003. On the same site will also be a child-care center, bank and a townhouse-style office complex.
Now in its 34th year, Long & Foster mainly does residential sales, but it does some commercial transactions and rentals, too. It's the largest real-estate company in Virginia and in the five-state, Mid-Atlantic region. Last year was its best ever, with record sales of $18.5 billion on 89,624 property transactions — a 19-percent increase over 2000 sales.