Robert Kinlin and Paul Grover have been through a lot as business partners. In the mid ‘80s, Grover worked as a broker for Kinlin when he was a real estate investor on Cape Cod.

In 1994, the two started Kinlin Grover Real Estate, and in 1999 sold the company to GMAC. They worked together under that franchise for 10 years, and in February, started a new company: Robert Paul Properties.

Their new company services and sells luxury properties on Cape Cod and the South Coast of Massachusetts, with offices in Osterville and Marion.

The two men said they were already working in a separate division at their old company for the last year, dealing with the most expensive listings, so the transition wasn’t too hard. There is still a great deal of good will between Robert Paul Properties and Kinlin Grover Real Estate; both still refer clients to one another.

"Hey, our names are still on the building," Kinlin said. "We want to see them succeed. We just saw a new opportunity."

Is this a good time to start a business?

RK: We think it’s a terrific time to start a business. If we were in an up market, and racing around and selling a number of different properties, we wouldn’t have the time to set up the company and build the infrastructure. We wouldn’t have the time to set up the model that we envision makes sense going forward in this business.

PG: People need a good broker now more than ever, because there are a lot of people who really need to get the job done and need to get the house sold.

RK: If you look at the number of brokers who are in the business down here on the Cape, there is clearly that 80/20 rule that applies.

Which is?

RK: 20 percent of the brokers write 80 percent of the business down here. In many of these other companies, they just… play the numbers game. They bring in 30 or 40 agents, and if they throw enough stuff against the wall, some of it sticks.

PG: That’s been a problem with our industry. It’s always been a relatively easy industry to enter. You don’t need a lot of experience to get hired by a residential real estate company. That’s the way the industry has developed. You see a lot of people who don’t really work the business, or have never learned how to work the business. We’re not looking to have the most brokers at all, that’s not our goal. Hopefully we’ll have the best brokers, but we expect to have a small, finely tuned team.

This is the part of building the infrastructure you mentioned earlier. What else is involved?

RK: So much of the business is worked from the home office, to an office in your car, to a place to meet and greet and have administrative back up services. The whole mega-office type arrangement is history.

PG: We do believe there is a certain synergy you get from [the larger office] environment, so there is a piece of that we’re trying to keep, as far as keeping people together and keeping conversation going. We don’t want people operating completely in isolation, almost to the contrary, we want people to really know the inventory and know the listings. We want to have a small, tight knit group of brokers that are always communicating. You don’t need this old model with 30 desks and 4,000 square feet of space. That’s not where the production occurs anymore.

What other types of back-office support do you offer?

PG: Let’s start with the photography. That’s huge in our business. Instead [of going to the newspaper], what most people do now is go online and search for "Cape Cod." If you can see high quality images, like [we have], that’s appealing.

We still believe in the Boston newspapers. We think that print advertising is more important to drive overall business our way, not to sell specific houses. It’s to keep our names in front of people who could be buying or selling … but not necessarily to have 45 little adds with abbreviations about living rooms or water view or that type of things. We think print advertising is still important, but it’s to try to push people to the website.

So you’re advertising your company, not houses.

PG: If you get to the website, that’s where you’ll see all the houses promoted. We try to target where the buyers are coming from. Instead of putting an ad in a newspaper and hoping that the right person is going to see it … If we can get this into their hands, or into their mailbox and into their house, that’s better than just hoping they’re going to open the newspaper and see it there.

RK: We do a lot of direct mail, too, to different segments of the market based upon assessment, that drive people to the website.

How important is the "Just Sold" flyer, or portion of your website?

PG: "Just Sold" is as important now as it has been in a long long time. It’s important for this to get out. People in the glass half empty group, they’ll see this and say ‘wow that did sell? Really?’ That same person the next week, you’ll hear ‘that’s the house we should have bought.’ A lot of people think that things aren’t selling and aren’t moving. We know people who are kicking themselves, people with cash on the sidelines. A lot of people are in a very strong position to buy. They may be afraid to buy, or they think they shouldn’t, or they’re waiting for prices to come down more.

Is it hard to find the right value for properties in such a volatile market?

PG: Value is what somebody puts on it. It’s very different than selling stocks. This is emotion. This is people’s houses. This is the beach, this is their kids, and this is summer, and Thanksgiving. It might sound corny, but this is Fourth of July barbeques, and maybe a wedding out there on the lawn. It’s harder to quantify.

RK: I think going forward there are an awful lot of things that are different. People are looking at value a lot differently, they’re thinking a lot different in how to approach buying high-end real estate. Like Paul was saying, so much of it can be an emotional purchase. So many of the people who have the wherewithal to buy these waterfront properties, they’ve been hurt, certainly if they’ve had money in equities.

It’s not cool any longer to spend a lot of money, and it’s not cool any longer to drive a nice car … The psyche has changed.

PG: There is something that is really reassuring about standing on a piece of [luxury] property, after somebody has looked at a stock portfolio that tumbles, and continues to tumble, and seems like it’s in a free fall without any real control. That’s solid land.

How do you build momentum for a new business in a market where consumer confidence is so low?

RK: It isn’t like Paul and I are starting from square one without any listings. We’ve been in the business for years. We essentially started the business with 70 some-odd listings, four or five assistants, and half a dozen brokers. Versus opening up with no listings and no brokers, so we started running the day we opened up the doors.

GMAC offered to sell Kinlin Grover back to you last year. Why did you start Robert Paul Properties instead?

RK: We looked hard at [buying Kinlin Grover back.] We looked real hard. We just decided that the better option for us was to go out and start Robert Paul.

PG: The new model is where we see the business going and industry going, it was more opportune to do something new.

Robert & Paul’s 5 Best Restaurants To Meet A Client On Cape Cod:
1. Five Bays Bistro, Osterville
2. Nappies, Provincetown
3. Wequasset Inn, Chatham
4. The Raw Bar, Popponesset
5. The Captain Kidd, Woods Hole