CEO Philip Wood leads real estate firm into an era of changes

Philip R. Wood COURTESY PHOTO Philip R. Wood drove to Miami last week where he attended a meeting as a member of the Realty Alliance, an invitation-only club with some of the nation's top independent brokerage firms. Talking while on the road, Mr. Wood said one of the group's main topics of discussion would be how to survive the changing landscape of home sales in Southwest Florida and elsewhere.

As president and CEO of John R. Wood Realty, Mr. Wood has led the real estate services firm for 23 years. His father started the business on Fifth Avenue South in Naples in 1958; today the company has offices throughout Southwest Florida.

Although sales deflated by more than half since peaking at $2.7 billion in 2005 and tapering off at close to $1.2 billion last year, John R. Wood still ranks among the nation's top 100 independent firms.

While the housing crisis changed the way people buy and sell, at least temporarily, Mr. Wood is focusing on something he can more control more easily: marketing through new technology. The company's Web site has won awards from the Florida Association of Realtors; communication with clients is also via e-mail, text messages, You Tube videos and social networking Web sites.

"We've become known as a company that specializes in marketing for the people," Mr. Wood says. "I'm very involved in the marketing and technology of the company — two very important segments.

"We've had to really emphasize technology to support our agents."

Today's marketing tools are far different than when Mr. Wood was growing up in Naples, sometimes working at his father's real estate office in the summer. Midway through his college days at Emory University in Atlanta, where he earned a degree in marketing and business administration, he decided to come back home and go into real estate.

"I really wasn't sure at all at that time," he says, adding, "There was no pressure from my parents. They wanted me to do what I wanted to do."

But after watching friends go off to corporate jobs in cold climates, Mr. Wood says, "I thought Naples sounded pretty good."

He remembers the year he came back to work for his father's business as a sales associate, in 1977, as a time before fax machines or e-mail.

"The MLS data (property listing information) was passed out twice each week on 5-by-8 pieces of paper which we would file in a three-ring (binder)," he says.

Now Mr. Wood, 53, predicts better times are on the horizon for the housing market as well. It's "very definitely" turning around, he says. "We were bumping along the bottom there," he says. "We really didn't start coming out of it until the October (2008) credit crisis. We thought we were coming out of it, but we had a lousy fourth quarter.

"Fortunately, there have been some very good national sales trends in the last few months, with Florida and California leading the way. January, February and March (2009) have all been pretty good."

He cites lower housing prices as fueling some of the increase in sales. Properties — more than during the boom years — are selling to middle-to high-income homeowners. The ambitious investors and speculators that helped the market swell to epic proportions, as well as lead to an epic collapse, are mostly gone. Although they made for big sales figures for a while, Mr. Wood says, "We'd rather see people who really want to use the homes anyway."

The days of big sales, however, are far from over. In the first quarter of 2009, the company has made at least two sales upwards of $3 million, one around $10 million and one for about $17 million, suggesting that Southwest Florida's charms still work on the wealthy.

"These days we're definitely doing more low-end (sales), but we truly specialize in the luxury upper-end market," he says.

It's a legacy passed on from his father and mother, who both still live in Naples. The younger Mr. Wood, who has two daughters, has been a chairman of the board for Salvation Army in Collier County and has also been involved with Junior Achievement in Lee and Collier counties and the Holocaust Museum.

If there's time leftover, he likes to play tennis, golf and travel — often to the mountains in North Carolina, where some of nature's beauty, unlike the rapid development of Southwest Florida, is mercifully free of any change at all.