Founder buys back company, comes full circle

SANDPOINT — The evidence is purely anecdotal and there certainly are no business metrics to back it up, but the return of one Realtor to the local property scene just might be a harbinger of a stronger market to come.

One local Realtor jokingly referred to it as the “Brewster Effect.”

Chuck Brewster this month came full circle when he re-purchased the company he founded in 1978 and moved back into the same building that housed the firm at that time. Over the years, he has bounced back-and-forth between Sandpoint and Maui, managing to arrive at both locales at precisely the point when sales were picking up.

“When it’s good there, it’s bad here — and vice versa,” Brewster said, adding that he has been able to sense the market before making his moves. “You’ve got to know when to fold ‘em and when to hold ‘em.”

Last week, the company returned to the ground floor of the Farmin Building at the corner of Second and Cedar, with both the founder and Tom Renk, who bought the company in 1981 and has run it under the C.M. Brewster & Co. name ever since, joining forces again 32 years later. The two have added a couple of walls to the former Cabin Fever retail space, but, other than moving downstairs to the ground floor, the office bears a striking resemblance to the one that first opened at a time when Sandpoint’s population felt like it was equally divided between loggers and back-to-the-landers.

“Most of this furniture, I bought back in the early 70s,” said Brewster, drawing attention to the collection of oak desks and chairs situated around the room.

Even the portrait photo of the company’s apocryphal founder, Charla Mae, still hangs inside the entry door, just as she has for decades. No one is quite sure who the stern-looking woman really is; her photo just happened to be in a frame that caught the Realtor’s eye and her presence has become part of the firm’s history.

Brewster said that some things about the town feel familiar, while others have changed with progress over the years.

“Sandpoint is the same, but it’s different — and it’s much better,” he said. “It’s obvious that people care about the town. There’s a lot more pride of ownership than there used to be.”

Brewster’s most recent address was Thailand, where he met his wife, Chanya, and started a family that now includes two boys and a girl. Although perpetual warmth was attractive for a while, he said that the constant search for shade or air-conditioning made Sandpoint’s cooler climate tug him back this way. And his wife’s take on that decision?

“She’s kind of ready for it to be summer again,” he said.

Howard Faux, Ken Clark and Dwayne Parsons will join Renk and Brewster at the company. Between them, they plan to cover the field in residential, rural and commercial properties. They will do so in a real estate environment that no longer resembles the one that greeted C.M. Brewster & Co. in the early days, when virtually every office had a small staff. Since that time, several major players have moved into positions of prominence on the local scene.

“We’re not planning to compete with the big boys,” Brewster said. “It’s just the same, down-home thing we’ve always done. We’ll open the doors and see who walks in.”

The Realtor has been impressed by the impact of the Sand Creek Byway, as well as improvements to the downtown core, both marking big changes compared to what he encountered when he pulled into town driving a pickup with a homemade camper some 35 years ago. At that time, he began his real estate career as an appraiser for Jack Young at Rainbow Realty. Though most of the older real estate pioneers are gone now, a few of the same players he started with are still around, Brewster noted.

“We were all kids in our late-20s back then,” he said. “John Denver was singing ‘Rocky Mountain High’ and we all had that dream.”

After selling the firm to Renk and moving to Maui for the first time, he returned to Sandpoint in 1991 to form Pacific Northwest Investments and Brewster Financial, then returned to the island in about 1997 when the market came back there. This time around, Brewster said the combination of market forces and positive changes in Sandpoint made this latest homecoming a logical plan.

“It was time,” he said. “The market has bottomed out and it’s coming back.”

Surrounded as he is by new names and different firms in a town that has seen its share of changes since his last visit, Brewster seems to find comfort in the fact that his 2013 address is the same one he had in 1978. And there is another touchstone to the past that has remained intact, he pointed out.

“When I walk in Connie’s,” he said, “it’s like I stepped back in time.”