Pedal to Properties, a Boulder, Colorado-based real estate company that shows homes by bike, plans to open up an office in Portland.
Co-founder Chris Sweeney told me via telephone this morning that they’ve already met with commercial real estate agents in Portland and they hope to nail down an office space in the next month or so.
Sweeney and his partner Matt Kolb launched their company in July of 2007 and the option to view new homes by bike has really caught on.
“It just seems to make sense.”
— Chris Sweeney on his company’s move to Portland.
An article that appeared last week in the Wall Street Journal reported that, “sales at Pedal To Properties have risen 40% over the past year, half of which Mr. Kolb attributes to the bike showings.”
That article also featured Portland realtor Kirsten Kaufman, whose “Tour de Homes” have garnered local and national attention in recent weeks (including an Associated Press story published this morning).
According to Sweeney, the plan in Portland would be to hire a managing broker, three to five new agents, and then, “see how it goes from there.”
Sweeney says they’ve looked at office space in several different Portland neighborhoods on the east and west side of the Willamette. He also added that they have a truck with a trailer they can load bikes onto if a client wants to tour homes far from the main office.
Pedal to Properties plans to license the real-estate-by-bike concept nationwide, but Managing Broker Chris Sweeney says Portland is their first office outside of Boulder.
When I asked him why they chose Portland, Sweeney said, “Like Boulder, it’s very accessible by bike, it’s a bike-friendly community, and the people there are open to new ideas and new ways of doing things. It just seems to make sense.”