Cashin Goes Corporate

Remember Del Monte Realty? How about Cornish & Carey Residential? Pacific Preferred Properties? Contempo? Fox & Carskadon? If you're searching your memory banks and coming up empty, don't fret; you're not alone.  They're all names of real estate brokerages lost to history when they were purchased by over the past two decades. Last month, Coldwell announced it had bought independent Peninsula broker Cashin Company, ending a run that began, ironically, when two generations of former Fox & Carskadon brokers went out on their own after Coldwell bought up their former employers.

Cashin Company has six offices on the Peninsula, and as anyone who has driven down El Camino Real on a Sunday can tell you, they have a robust presence in Burlingame. Over the past decade and a half, their yellow "Open House" signs have become as familiar as beers at the or the annual Burlingame-San Mateo " Now, in what makes a neat bookend to a 20-year campaign of growth, Coldwell Banker has purchased a company borne out of one of its earliest acquisitions.

Down in Belmont, Carlmont Associates, with 50 years under its belt, recently announced a partnership with RE/MAX Star Properties. That will impact Burlingame not at all, but it's further evidence of a trend many will find bittersweet at best, a sign of the coming apocalypse at worst.

The biggest question is also the most obvious: why now? Emmet "Skip" Cashin, co-founder of the company that until recently bore his name, has been shopping his business around for quite some time.  Coldwell, he said in a press release, was the company he'd been looking for; consistent with his own in terms of scale, scope, technology and culture.

And yet, he sold it now, during a depressed economic period. Could it be that real estate firms are subject to the same market issues that, for the past two years, have made prices of individual homes resemble the Santa Cruz Boardwalk's Giant Dipper?

In Cashin's case, market issues are compounded by something more universal; Cashin was 49 when he founded Cashin Company. He has 40 years of experience in real estate. Prior to spinning off with Cashin Company, he was the president of Fox & Carskedon.

His father (also named Emmet Cashin), was 73 in 1995. He passed away two years later. Co-founder Chuck Aloo was  47. Do the math. While Cashin the younger and Aloo will each have significant roles under Coldwell, both are in their mid-60s and may be looking to slow down a little bit.

Rick Turley, president of Coldwell Banker in the Bay Area, calls Cashin "a perfect fit with Coldwell Banker in terms of our respective cultures, our core values and our strength in the local marketplace, especially in the luxury market." And before you start planning your "no chain businesses!" protest outside of the soon-to-be-Coldwell office at 1412 Chapin Ave., remember that, no matter how large it is now -- Coldwell claims 3,500 agents and 60 offices in the Bay Area – Coldwell Banker was founded in San Francisco, in 1906. It's hard to dismiss that kind of street cred.

The new company will be called Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, which inarguably lacks the folksy appeal of Cashin Company, or remaining independent firms Alain Pinel and McGuire. Good news for them: Cashin going corporate cements their status as the leading local indie shops. All of the Pinel and McGuire agents I've spoken to over the past few weeks have agreed: "This is good for us."

It's probably not bad for Burlingame, either. By all accounts, Coldwell conducts itself well and is known, among agents, for its lack of corporate bureaucracy. Still, losing another visibly local business is no reason to celebrate. I'll miss those yellow signs.