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During the mid-eighties I volunteered at the Sierra Club bookstore run by the San Francisco Bay Chapter. It was just up College Avenue from U.C. Berkeley and Cody's Books and the Upstart Crow and all the other famous bookshops of the place and time. The Sierra Club store competed with all the others, but instead of generating money for an individual, the profit furthered the conservation goals of the Sierra Club. California was booming, the vertiginous real estate market was everyone’s favorite topic of conversation, and the cost of conservation was skyrocketing right along with home prices. Land protection has always been my passion, so it occurred to me that a real estate company could be run like the bookstore, except the profit would go to land trusts. The symmetry of land use funding land preservation was just so appealing that I started a new career in real estate, learned the business, and in January 1992 Arbor Realty opened its doors. We donate all corporate profits to land trusts, including the Triangle Land Conservancy, The Nature Conservancy, the Eno River Association, and the North Carolina Botanical Garden Foundation. The people who work here are paid the same as at any other company. We pay for advertising, rent, phones, and other overhead just like anyone else. Our business is general real estate brokerage. We list homes for sale, we are buyers' agents, and we manage property for investors. At Arbor we strive for excellence in serving our clients' needs in every way we can. We get a lot of satisfaction from doing our job well, and a little more for doing good.
Bill Bracey, Owner/Broker
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