With fewer homes on the market, agents pull out all the stops—even knocking on doors.
A new and larger headquarters for Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Ambassador Real Estate will be built at 177th and Burke Streets, and the firm plans to move in next fall.
“It’s totally driven by growth,” says Vince Leisey, owner of the company formerly known as Prudential Ambassador Real Estate. “We keep playing musical doors trying to make room and we’re out of space.”
The recently rebranded firm has doubled its number of residential sales in the past six years, he says, and expanded the number of Omaha agents from 135 to about 370 in the last eight years. Ambassador recently started a mortgage company and three years ago launched a title insurance company. It also has a Lincoln office with about 30 agents.
Leisey will be the majority owner of the building planned for just west of the Village Pointe shopping complex, a few blocks south of West Dodge Road.
He is still working with an architect on details, but envisions a building about 60,000 square feet, three or four stories high, with underground parking. The cost will be about $10 million, and features will include large conference rooms equipped with the latest technology.
Ambassador will occupy about 45,000 square feet, and the rest will be leased to one or more companies.
The current Ambassador headquarters is 32,000 square feet, and was built about eight years ago just north of 132nd Street and West Dodge Road.
While many firms are downsizing office space because of mobile equipment and less bulky high-tech equipment, Ambassador is going in the “exact opposite direction,” says Leisey, who added: “There is lots of value to continue to have space.”
Leisey prefers a mega-office to a network of satellites for real estate agents, as he says that helps foster a single and consistent company culture.
And even though a REALTOR’s work can be done largely on the go, Leisey encourages agents to come to the office on a daily basis. “Activity breeds activity,” he says.
For more information, visit www.omaha.com.
