4 minute read
GROWING UP TOGETHER
Photo courtesy 208 Real Estate
208 Real Estate Builds The Idaho Way
WORDS BY HEATHER HAMILTON-POST
For 208 Real Estate, it’s all about the big picture. The sort of picture that you might see, for example, from the beautiful floor-to-ceiling windows in your new home, overlooking the foothills or an expansive backyard. This is real estate with a vision from the ground up.
“What we realized was that all these people moving here from out of town wanted the Idaho experience,” says Jonny Newell, broker and co-owner of 208 Real Estate.
Newell and Tracy Skidmore, 208 Real Estate’s co-owner, vice president of operations, decided to do something about it. “We started by developing a one-acre lot a little further out in the country. You’ve got more space, and land is a little less expensive,” said Skidmore, who is also an experienced Treasure Valley builder.
Newell and Skidmore have been working together for eight years now. Their company uniquely offers full service real estate from development, to custom building, to sales and resales with 68 independent agents. Skidmore, who moved to Idaho in 2001 from Washington, says, early on, it was clear to him that this area was poised for growth.
Newell, a lifelong Idahoan, is the son of a logger and rancher, who has lived in New Meadows, Sweet-Ola, and the Treasure Valley. He understands Idaho, in many ways because he was born here—at St. Luke's downtown, which, he says, was once the edge of town. Even in junior high, Newell says he’s been aware of the double-edged reality of locals seeing the farm land disappear under new home developments, “I’ve tried to embrace it,” he said. “There’s a lot of good people moving here.” Newell decided to jump in and attempt to balance what he saw happening rather than complain about the inevitable.
The inevitable was that population growth led to a shortage of housing. To help address that reality, Skidmore’s company, Trident Homes, is creating some of the inventory that 208 Real Estate sells. The focus is custom homes, and Skidmore says many of them speak to that ‘Idaho way’—attached RV garages and homes with storage, for example. 208 Real Estate serves many clients looking for affordable, easy maintenance, single family homes.
... we have to maintain the beauty, the rivers, the forest, the hunting, maintain all the things that bring people to Idaho...
-Tracy Skidmore
“The national builders are difficult to compete with from a local builder standpoint,” explains Skidmore. To compensate, 208 Real Estate has remained focused on keeping it local wherever they can. “It isn’t production-style,” he says. “Houses seem expensive, but builders aren’t making a ton of money—it’s everybody else. The building economy has carried the Valley for quite a while. It’s really been about construction.”
New construction accounts for a portion of their sales, but Newell says that in “that Idaho way” many clients are repeat customers who want to upgrade or downsize their homes. “We’re big, but we’re not trying to be the biggest,” explains Newall.
Right now, 208 Real Estate contracts with 68 agents between Twin Falls and the Treasure Valley. Skidmore estimates total home sales at 600 per year, which makes them, at last count, the third biggest real estate company in Twin Falls and in the top 15 in the Valley.
“In Idaho, we have more resources. There’s so much land. We have water, we have power. It's beautiful, and we're going to maintain the beauty of Idaho–but we have the opportunity to grow.” says Skidmore. “We are making sure we do it right.”
Newell says this means 208 Real Estate and Trident Homes focus on building community as much as building their business.
“You want to talk about growth, you want to talk about opportunity, you want to talk about making the world a better place for your kids,” says Skidmore. “That happens with growth, but we have to maintain the beauty, maintain the rivers, maintain the forest, maintain the hunting, maintain all the things that bring people to Idaho. And I think that's what we're responsibly trying to do."
