Daughter to carry on family real estate business
EL CENTRO — Anna and Robert Prince, founders of Prince & Associates Realtors here, are in the process of handing down their company to their daughter, Sherry Cowie.
Cowie has now taken the role of president and by the end of this fiscal year will be the owner of her parent’s company. After 39 years in the making both Anna and Robert felt it was time to let their daughter take on a bigger role to ease off some of the stress that comes with real estate.
“I think with all of the college education she has, the backing, and the real estate savviness she’s going to do great,” Anna Prince said of her daughter.
Prince added that Cowie will be working with her husband, Matthew. She said not only does the couple work well together, but she believes they are cut from similar cloth as her and her husband, Robert.
With the rebranding of the company, Cowie plans to still work by her parents’ motto — “We treat you like royalty” — because she wants her clients to know that she and her staff care about them.
“Anna, my mother, and Robert, my stepfather, started the company in 1979,” Cowie said. “They both had been in real estate before that. She was doing loans, and he was a real estate broker. From what I remember, they were one of the first real estate companies in the Imperial Valley to have their own website.”
Prince & Associates is located on Eighth street. They’ve had several locations throughout the Imperial Valley, but Cowie wanted to bring it back to where they started.
“They started off in this area (Eighth Street) at 780 Olive, which is right behind was their first office,” Cowie said.
She recalls her parents were both active in leadership roles within the real estate industry. Both served on the board of directors for the Association of Realtors. Her father was a two-time president. He was also a state director on the California Association of Realtors and a regional chair.
“They started out back then, built this business and served a short time when they were in the Realty World franchise,” Cowie said. “Then they decided to break away from that and do their own thing. They liked being a part of the town and not necessarily part of a big franchise.”
Earlier this year, the discussion for ownership transfer had begun, “Robert had a little bit of a health scare, and he decided that his health and happiness were more important. So he took a step back and decided it was time for me to take the role a president,” Cowie said.
Small changes have already begun to happen in the company, “We started with some rebranding, obviously our company logo has been around since 1979, and we actually updated it. So we do have a new company logo, and we’re marketing it to show the transition.”
The company will hold a ribbon-cutting for its new location at 343 S. Eighth St. on Thursday at 8:45 a.m.
“We are hoping with the ribbon cutting we will give everyone a peek into our whole new brand,” Cowie said.