
While Cheney Real Estate is celebrating 15 year’s of satisfied customers, owner Joe Cheney is also celebrating an approximate 30-year anniversary of being in the real estate business. Cheney started Cheney Real Estate in 1990 after having worked for two other agencies.
Aroostook Republican Photo/Natalie Bazinet
Joe Cheney has been helping Aroostook County residents find just the right home for just about 30 years. His business, Cheney Real Estate, is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year.
“I have always tried to offer personalized services to sellers and buyers, and after all these years in the real estate business I have the knowledge to be of a real service,” Cheney said.
While Cheney Real Estate is a small agency, it allows him the opportunity to truly know his buyers and sellers and is able to offer them personalized services that fit their needs.
When a customer is looking to sell their property, Cheney always makes suggestions to them get the property ready for showing and tries to give sellers an accurate market value of their property.
When Cheney interacts with a prospective real estate owner, he also listens carefully to what they want and, equally important, what they can afford.
“I don’t like to see young families get in over their heads with too big a mortgage,” he said. In working with prospective buyers to find that perfect home or piece of property, Cheney will suggest various ways of financing and has no problem showing them a dozen or more properties until they find just the right one.
“Many sellers and buyers that I’ve worked with throughout the years have become wonderful friends, and that makes the business fun and rewarding,” he said.
Like anything in life, you get out of a business what you put into it, and Cheney isn’t one to skimp on effort. He’s been known to mow a seller’s lawn or shovel a driveway while they’re away in order to bring buyers to their doorstep. Cheney is willing to go the extra mile, which is a crucial characteristic for keeping a small agency successful in a highly competitive market.
It also helps to be jack-of-all trades, as he has found.
“It’s very important to know your product, including a working knowledge of building construction, plumbing and electrical wiring,” he said.
With the celebration of 15 successful years, Cheney will be ‘hiring’ a new employee; his wife, Carolyn, who has recently retired from the University of Maine at Presque Isle will be joining Cheney on a part-time basis.
“She has been a broker for many years and is looking forward to playing a more active role in the agency,” he said.
While he looks forward to the future of Cheney Real Estate, Joe also realizes how far he’s come, specifically how much has changed in the past 30 years of being in the real estate business.
“I’ve been in business for 30 years selling houses, and when I first started out with another agency, we didn’t have a copy machine,” he remembered. “Everyone has a copy machine today, but we always had to run across the street to the Aroostook Republican to make a copy and I think we paid five or ten cents for it.”
Cheney also commented on what a difference fax machines and computers have made for the business.
“The fax machine really helped a lot because we could send documents and information through it” he said, “and it was a blessing to see the computer come along with word processors so that documents could be corrected before they were printed out,” Cheney remembered, adding that lawyers never liked white-out and correctly typing documents on a typewriter was time consuming and laborious for anyone who was less than perfect at typing.
Another tremendous advancement in real estate was the creation of disclosure statements.
“Disclosure statements include information about the property that is up for sale, such as what type of septic system it has, how much insulation and what type, information about wells, what types of windows it has,” he described. Disclosure statements are an indispensable facet of the industry, ensuring that buyer, seller, and real estate agent know exactly what the property entails.
Cheney Real Estate can be contacted at 492-1012.