THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 14, 1995 TAG: 9501120287
SECTION: REAL ESTATE WEEKLY PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
Gov. George Allen will be the featured speaker at the Mid-Winter Business Meeting of the Virginia Association of Realtors, to be held at the Richmond Marriott Hotel Jan. 20-23.
Allen will address the group at the RPAC Awards luncheon at noon Jan. 21. Some 700 realty agents are expected to attend.
Other speakers include Tom Lundstedt, property law expert; Tom Martin, management consultant, and Pat Campbell-White, an authority on wetlands legislation.
Pat Hillard of Cenit Bank's Mortgage Center will discuss recent changes in the mortgage industry at the Thursday breakfast meeting of the Portsmouth/Chesapeake Association of Realtors, scheduled for 9 a.m. at The Max Restaurant. The $9 cost includes tax and gratuity.
Make reservations before noon Tuesday by phoning 397-4613.
Tidewater Insulated Forms of Chesapeake is providing PolySteel stay-in-place concrete forms to build the area's first super-insulated concrete home, at 704 Forest Mills Road in the Woodard's Mill subdivision in Chesapeake.
Anyone interested in attending the next open house for a demonstration of the product should call 588-5570.
PolySteel Forms are a post and beam construction of reinforced concrete composed of lightweight, fire retardant expanded polystyrene.
They are easily assembled. When poured with concrete, they provide a fully insulated concrete exterior wall that is soundproof, airtight and at least 50 percent stronger than a conventional exterior wall, according to the manufacturer.
Joyce Fitzsimmons, an associate with Rose & Krueth Realty Corp.'s new homes division, has earned the Certified Residential Specialist designation for completing a course offered by the Residential Sales Council of the Realtors National Marketing Institute.
She is co-site manager of the Cheshire Forest community in Chesapeake.
Bob Schaefer, owner and founder of Century 21 At The Mall in Pembroke Mall, Virginia Beach, recently celebrated almost a dozen years in business by renovating the firm's office.
The redecoration includes a glass solarium entrance where new ceramic tile and track lighting highlight a life-size mural of a newly sold home painted by Woodson and Wood.
The office also has two miniature houses constructed and painted in detail down to a newspaper at the door.
Schaefer began in April 1993 with a small kiosk and 1,000 square feet of spaced in what was then called the patio of Pembroke Mall. He now employs 55 agents and an administrative staff and has a second kiosk at Greenbrier Mall in Chesapeake.
His office space has increased to 3,300 square feet and his agency sells 1,100 homes per year.
Nonresidential construction contracts for Hampton Roads in November were up 3 percent, according to the F.W. Dodge Division of the publisher McGraw-Hill, producers of the Dodge Report.
According to the figures, $39.8 million in contracts were reported for both the Southside and Peninsula. In November 1993, the total was $38.7 million.
Residential construction contracts were off 18 percent for November, the company says, declining from $64 million to $52.7 million.
For the 11 months through November, the value of nonresidential construction contracts in this area more than doubled, from $311.4 million in 1994 to $633.7 million in '93. Residential contracts, however, declined from $707.3 million to $643.7 million, according to Dodge.
The Prudential Decker Realty has developed a program, ``The Address Express,'' that allows new homeowners to simplify the steps needed to notify organizations and companies when they move.
The homeowner simply lists the organizations he would like to notify and Address Express does the rest.
High tech update: Touring your dream home doesn't require a real house anymore. It can be done electronically with virtual reality equipment, according to Philadelphia architect Mike Rosen. He says the electronic tour can include opening doors and poking around in closets, cabinets and appliances. Rosen has been demonstrating virtual reality to builders at his office for several weeks and hopes to set up a public demonstration booth in a mall soon . . . Electronic Realty Associates has begun the year by posting 19,000 of its national listings, complete with color photographs, on the Internet. Anyone with Internet access, anywhere in the world, will be able to search through the listings in seconds. The Internet system is being developed by Homes & Land Publishing, which has been providing a national real estate database, without photos, on the Prodigy on-line service. In November, Homes & Land unveiled a new database on the Internet, with about 50,000 total listings. MEMO: On the Move reports management changes, awards, seminars and new
services offered by real estate firms. The events should be generally
open to the public. Photos will be used as space permits and cannot be
returned.
Send the information to Real Estate Weekly, The Virginian-Pilot, 150
W. Brambleton Ave., Norfolk Va. 23510, or fax it to 446-2531. Please
include a phone number. by CNB