By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Maggie Fawcett is happy to be doing business in her hometown Bowling Green, and that her business is helping people make the city their hometown.
Earlier this year, Fawcett opened a Danberry Co. Realtors office at 311 S. Main St., Bowling Green.
Opening the office, she said, fulfills one of the goals she set for herself when she joined the Toledo-based real estate firm four years.
She and several agents lived in BG, and Danberry was doing an increasing amount of business here, yet it did not have an office here. “People in Bowling Green like to do business with Bowling Green companies,” she said. “That we didn’t have a physical location was posing a problem for a lot of our clients.”
With the absorption of Welles-Bowen’s agents, Danberry now has an 18 percent market share locally. In the Toledo Region, she said the company has a 30 percent share, the market leader.
A third generation broker, she is one of a trio of brokers who now own a minority share in the company. She, Dan McQuillen, and Kevin Warren are the future of the company as it undergoes a slow transition under the guidance of majority owner Lynn Fruth.
As part of establishing his legacy, Fruth has launched an initiative to encourage agents to do community service, and recognizing that work.
Fawcett said that she’s glad to be able to contribute to many of the programs, she enjoyed when she was a child growing up in Bowling Green.
The daughter of John Fawcett and Mary Noll, and sister of Joe Fawcett, she enjoys seeing her children participating a softball and soccer, and all the other parks and recreation programs she enjoyed as a kid. Fawcett and husband, Bryan Hartzler, have three daughters, age 4, 7, and 8.
Fawcett worked in the summer parks program from high school into college. When she enrolled at Bowling Green State University, her plan was to be a parks and recreation director. Then she realized that meant she’d be working all summer. So she switched to education, earning a Master’s Degree with the goal of being a math teacher and softball coach.
She decided to join her grandfather Al Newlove’s real estate business. “I went into real estate to learn from my grandfather while he was still active. I thought it would be something fun to do on the side. It grabbed hold, and I never thought about teaching again.”
After 10 years in the family’s agency, Fawcett moved north to Danberry.
It was “a difficult decision,” she said. “I loved every single minute” working with Newlove Realty, but I wanted more. … I knew to go where I wanted to go, I needed to make a change.”
She hasn’t regretted the move, and now a company vice president she has an office right across the street from where she started.
The Danberry BG office has 10 agents, an administrator, and an office manager, in addition to Fawcett. Also other Danberry agents stop by to use the office when in town.
Service, she said, is engrained in the way Danberry’s does business. The leadership team’s main customers are the agents, she said. “We give them the tools they need so they can take care of and better serve their customers.”
The agency offers full support – placing signs, advertisements, posting listings, updating website, arranging for photography. “It’s all done for them after they turn in their file,” she said, “so they can be out face to face with clients. Otherwise they’re going to get bogged down.
And Danberry’s website, Fawcett said, is a go-to site even for customers working with other companies.
The company also offers weekly education sessions as well as webinars as new agency training. “It’s constant education.”
Fawcett is upbeat about the Bowling Green market, but “things are tight.”
On the west side of town, builders can barely start digging foundations, and the property is sold, she said.
“We need some new construction,” she said
Fawcett considers it a dual market where people can buy into the market and move up. Those who already own can sell for a good return on investment, and then purchase their “dream” home.
“Anything at $200,000 and less is going quickly,” Fawcett said. “There’s a high demand for it.”
The city has several types of customers. “You have the people who want to live the two or three blocks from Main and Wooster so they can walk downtown for a cup of coffee. And then you have people who want to live on the west side of town at the golf course and want the huge house.”
Investors eye properties on the east side. Still “you have people who want to live on east side and want to preserve those neighborhoods.”
There are vibrant neighborhoods there just a few blocks from campus.
Fawcett appreciates the way BGSU and the city are collaborating “to try to figure out what to do with the corridor from Thurstin Avenue to State Street.
They are trying to do their due diligence and are seeking the advice of people who know the market.
“I appreciate living in a town where the university and the city work so closely together.”
