Published December 2002

MANAGING SUCCESS
Coast Real Estate Services' portfolio
has grown from one apartment
to properties worth more than $1 billion

Snohomish County Business Journal/JOHN WOLCOTT The Hoban brothers — Tom (left) and Shawn — competed with regional and national property management companies to add the Everett Station to their portfolio.

By John Wolcott
SCBJ Editor

In any business, having the right dream, the right talents, the right skills and the right niche at the right time usually creates a success story. That’s exactly what happened for Everett brothers Tom and Shawn Hoban.

In just 15 years, their Everett-based Coast Real Estate Services has become one of the leading property management companies in the Pacific Northwest. Today, they oversee more than 2.5 million square feet of commercial and office properties and more than 8,000 multi-family living units in Washington, Oregon and Idaho — a portfolio of managed properties valued at more than $1 billion.

They credit their success to hard work, knowing the real estate market and its players, understanding the best way to manage properties and focusing more on their clients’ needs than their own. Even 15 years seems like a long time, though, when Tom Hoban Jr., CEO and director of business development, looks back.

“My first managed property was the 29-unit Madrona Apartments (at Rucker and Everett avenues in downtown Everett). At that time, I was sleeping on friends’ living-room floors, carrying tools and a plumber’s plunger in my car and working long hours to get started,” he recalls. As his struggling company began growing, he offered half of the business to his brother Shawn if he would join him.

“I was just out of Notre Dame, where Tom had graduated, too, and working for a pharmaceutical company in Chicago,” said Shawn, president and director of management services. “We’d both grown up in Everett, graduating from Cascade High School, and here was a chance for a couple of young, hungry, competitive guys in their mid- to late-20s to grow this little business we believed in.”

As they developed their business, they found their skills and talents complemented each other, Tom as a promoter and business developer and Shawn as the organizer, planner and structural designer of the business. Today, they still work so closely as a team that they often finish each other’s sentences and thoughts as they talk about their common business goals and philosophies.

“We work well together,” Shawn said. “Tom cultivates relationships well, and that’s what this business is all about, understanding property owners’ motivations and investment goals. My strength is more in the operations side, understanding and creating the system to be able to provide a high level of service for these buildings and their owners, hiring the right people and setting high performance standards for ourselves and our employees.”

The firm’s portfolio has four distinct property management groups: multi-family properties, commercial and office properties, retail and light-industrial buildings, and self-storage facilities.

The business also operates Commercial Property Maintenance (CPM) in Everett as a separate company created to provide repairs, maintenance, landscaping and janitorial services, both for Coast’s clients and others who need CPM’s services but don’t have management contracts with Coast Real Estate Services.

Although the company operates throughout the Northwest, its core business remains in Everett, with a headquarters staff of 50 that includes accounting, education and staff development; maintenance; and other divisions. Overall, the company has 400 employees, counting on-site managers, landscaping and maintenance crews.

Longtime Everett resident Bob Dobler is senior vice president and a property manager in the main office; Senior Vice President Brett Carlton heads the commercial property management division and is also the firm’s in-house legal counsel; and Vice President Craig Goldsmith is responsible for property management and leasing activities for a portion of the commercial properties.

Recently, another Everett native, Teresa Cornellison, joined the firm after gaining experience in multi-family property management in the Midwest and on the East Coast.

The Puget Sound area accounts for 70 percent of Coast’s clients, including such high-profile customers as Providence Everett Medical Center, the Sparling office building in Lynnwood, Everett Marina Village and the Everett Station.

Snohomish County Business Journal file photo The Everett Marina Village is one of the largest retail centers managed by Coast Real Estate Services in the Pacific Northwest, indicative of the wide range of professional services the business has landed as clients over the past 15 years.

“The Everett Station is an example of a property management contract that put us in competition with regional and even national competitors,” Shawn Hoban said, noting the firm now has offices in Everett, Spokane and Vancouver, Wash., and Boise, Idaho.

“We’ve been fortunate to win competitive bid contracts 80 percent of the time,” Tom Hoban said, “and we’ve retained 90 percent of the clients we’ve signed since 1987. We pay attention to customers’ needs and we maintain ethical business standards.”

The Hobans set high standards for themselves and their business because they know it helps them succeed in maximizing their clients’ return on their investments, Tom Hoban said.

The Hoban brothers’ hard work won them the Institute of Real Estate Management’s Accredited Management Organization designation, presented to fewer than 15 percent of all property management firms nationally, and the Family Business Institute chose Coast as the top medium-size family business in Washington state.

Tom, a columnist for the Snohomish County Business Journal, has been featured in a Washington CEO magazine article about business people involved in nonprofit activities. Shawn Hoban was honored recently by the Puget Sound Business Journal as one of the region’s Top 40 Under 40 executives.

Both brothers are involved in service groups and family activities, with Tom in Everett’s Port Gardner Rotary Club, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, The Children’s Museum, YMCA, Junior Achievement and the Boys & Girls Club, among others. Shawn is active on the board of Archbishop Murphy High School and volunteers with Providence Hospital, the Downtown Everett Association and Immaculate Conception School.

The Hobans both live in their hometown, Tom with his wife, Margaret, and three children, Tom, 10; Phil, 8; and Madelyn, 5; Shawn with his wife, Kathie, and four girls, Kaitlin, 13; Shannon, 12; Ellie, 8; and Caroline, 6.

For more information on Coast Real Estate Services, call 425-339-3638 or 800-339-3634, send e-mail to tomhoban@coastmgt.com or visit www.coastmgt.com on the Internet.

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