Jack Conway, standing outside his first office in Hingham, chats with a newspaper delivery boy in this 1957 photo. His 50-year-old business, Jack Conway & Co., is now based in Norwell.
At a time when the real estate industry has experienced a significant amount of consolidation and franchising and many independently owned firms are making large profits by selling off their businesses, one local company proudly has boasted about its independent status.
Jack Conway & Co., a Norwell-based firm with 45 offices that bills itself as the largest independently owned and operated real estate firm in Massachusetts, turns 50 this month. The company has remained an independently run business despite lucrative offers from larger, well-heeled real estate firms.
In an interview with Banker & Tradesman, Jack Conway – chairman and founder of the company – suggested that the offers, with promises of huge payoffs, have not been tempting.
“Money doesn’t impress me,” Conway said simply. “I already have money, so you don’t have to impress me with money.”
Conway, who turns 83 in December and hasn’t announced plans of retiring anytime soon, says he hasn’t decided on a successor and hasn’t yet settled on a plan for what to do with his company when he’s no longer at the helm.
“I don’t feel like quitting,” he said. “I enjoy the job and the temptation of money doesn’t drive me.”
Industry leaders say Conway remains a hands-on executive who is respected for his professionalism and integrity. He has built a real estate firm that has captured a significant market share from Boston to Cape Cod and drawn the attention and admiration of competitors throughout New England.
“Jack Conway is a visionary. A franchise or chain could never win him over. What could they possibly bring to the table for him?” said Inez Steele, executive director of the Realty Guild, an association that represents independently owned real estate firms in Massachusetts.
“He has built his company with a strong foundation in community,” said Steele. “Relationships are what [are] important to him. When Jack Conway looks you in the eye and shakes your hand, you feel that you are the most important person in the world to him Â… He has touched so many lives.”
With 931 sales associates and brokers, the company does about $2 billion in sales volume annually, according to Conway. And the firm continues to expand. Just this year, the company opened a new office in Taunton and another in Hyannis. About three-quarters of the offices are located in buildings that the company owns, according to Conway.
Over the past five decades, the company has retained a cadre of loyal agents and employees – some of whom have remained with the company since its early beginnings. Conway’s senior executives – Richard Cahill, who is president, and Thomas Rudolph, who serves as executive vice president – have each been with the company for more than 30 years. Denis Lilla, the firm’s vice president of sales, has been with the company for 24 years.
‘The Right Attitude’
Mary Pecce, who currently manages the Scituate office, was one of the first women hired by the company more than 40 years ago. Over the years, several competing real estate firms tried to recruit Pecce. But Pecce, whose daughter Elaine Bongarzone also works for Jack Conway, rejected them.
“In my opinion, Jack’s the only one to work for,” Pecce said. “I never regretted staying with Jack.”
Conway is always available to help, according to Pecce. “If you needed to talk to him, you could pick up the phone and talk to him,” she noted.
Beth Van der Veer, a top-producing agent in Conway’s Mattapoisett office, said working for the company is like being part of a family.
“Jack as the leader has the right attitude,” said Van der Veer, who’s been with the company for 20 years. “He’s always positive. He gets involved in every office. He makes it a point of knowing everyone’s name and making everyone comfortable.”
Conway’s appreciation and respect for his employees is apparent. Every June, he has a memorial service for employees and their immediate family members who have passed away.
When an agent’s mother recently died and Conway wasn’t told about it, he became upset. “I should have been at the funeral,” he said.
Twice a year, Conway personally takes his top producers on special trips. This year there were paid trips to Puerto Rico for 94 lucky agents, and another 58 agents enjoyed Walt Disney World earlier in the year. Past trips have taken Conway and his agents to Aruba and the Cayman Islands.
“It brings us together as a family,” he said.
Conway half-jokingly said, “No one ever gets canned around here Â… I’ve got a set of rules I wrote 50 years ago and you either live by the rules or you’re out. Everybody knows that, so they live by the rules.”
One of the rules is “you don’t take my job,” said Conway. “I demand respect for my job,” he said.
Throughout the years, the Conway company has expanded its service offerings. It has a commercial division; an appraisal company that was established in late 2003 and has completed more than 2,000 property appraisals; and Conway Financial Services, which originates home loans.
Conway Financial Services – which was started in 1994 after Conway sold Northern Mortgage, a full-service mortgage firm, to Mellon Bank in the early 1990s – has grown from just five employees to 23. Last year, it originated 1,025 home loans totaling $195 million.
At one time, Conway Financial Services was run by Conway’s daughter, Carol Bulman. Bulman served as Conway Financial Services’ president and was named vice chairman of the overall company in 2002. But Bulman, who worked for her father for 15 years and was viewed as the heir apparent to run Jack Conway & Co., abruptly resigned in May 2002.
To this day, Conway won’t specifically address why Bulman left the company, but he makes it clear that she quit and wasn’t fired.
“Carol and I are very close,” he said. “She was seen as the successor but it didn’t work out.”
Conway’s two other children – Jack, who worked briefly for the company and is now a remodeler in Quincy, and Barbara, a Scituate resident – are not interested in running Jack Conway & Co. “I have three children and none of them [is] interested in the business,” he said.
Without specifically identifying anyone, Conway said he has very capable employees who “could run this company very nicely.”
Conway, who lives in Marshfield with his wife Patricia, still spends much of his time dropping by offices to meet with managers and agents. And he still personally takes calls from clients. He recalled a recent conversation he had with an old friend who was trying to sell his home through a Conway broker.
The friend wasn’t happy with the number of brokers and prospective buyers who were viewing his home, so Conway called the listing office and ordered the agent who answered the phone to tour the house within a half-hour and report back to him. The agent had read about the home online, but had not visited the property.
“You’ve got to see the property. You’ve got to see the house, see the neighborhood, talk to the buyer, talk to the seller,” he said.
Conway said he’ll take a direct call from anybody. “Just ask for Jack Conway, you’ll get me,” he said. “There’s no ‘put ’em on hold’ or ‘why are you calling?'”
‘A Highly Professional Group’
Competitors say they admire Conway for his generosity and his business skills.
“We can learn a lot of lessons from Jack Conway & Co.,” said Betsy Hines, a real estate broker with 35 years of experience who owns a firm in Marshfield.
Hines said it’s always a pleasure to do business with any Conway office, and most brokers like to co-broker deals with a Conway office because they know the transaction will go smoothly.
“It’s a highly professional group,” said Hines, who purchased her first two homes through Pecce, Conway’s Scituate sales manager. “All the managers are great. Jack’s success is his ability to put people together. Choosing the right managers is not easy. He pays good attention to them all.”
Hines praised Conway for getting agents within his offices to network and cooperate with each other and with agents outside of the company.
“When you think about the man, you have to smile,” said Hines. “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t really like him.”
Tom Marquis, owner of Marquis Real Estate GMAC – which has a Boston office and three others south of the city – has known Conway for 30 years and says he’s been a stable force in the industry.
“Jack is a great guy. He’s been good for the industry,” he said. “Nobody markets better than Jack Conway.”
Early in his career, Conway was a sportswriter and reporter. He enjoyed that work but had to give it up because it couldn’t pay the bills.
“I loved my job, but I got married when I was 30 and then we were about to have a baby – and $119.50 a week was not really what I had in mind, because I was spending $129.50,” he said.
Conway decided to try his hand in sales. He went to work for a real estate developer. Coming from a family of teachers, lawyers and writers, Conway said he knew very little about sales.
But despite his limited knowledge, Conway quickly became the top salesman. In time, Conway realized he could use his sales skills to start his own business. He opened an office in Hingham, and after a few months recruited his brother to help out. Soon he had built a sales force of six or eight.
From there, the company continued to expand. “We’ve been happy growing and [I’ve been] enjoying my job ever since,” he said.
Recently, a company official met with Conway to discuss takeover and franchising opportunities. Conway wanted to know what would happen to the offices, employees, agents and executives – the business he has spent the last five decades of his life creating. The executive indicated that if there were duplications, and if the economics didn’t work, cuts would be made.
“I said, ‘That doesn’t make it very tempting for a guy who worked 50 years to build a business to see somebody exchange it for money and then throw it away.’ He said, ‘Well, you just don’t understand big business.’ I said, ‘Maybe I don’t. Maybe that’s why I have a small business.'”
