Taylor Real Estate Schedules Move to Liberty Street in Easthampton
The relocation comes during the agency’s 65th anniversary year and symbolizes a future shift to fourth-generation owners
EASTHAMPTON—Taylor Real Estate, which is celebrating 65 years of operation this year, announced recently it will move to a new location on Liberty Street in Easthampton in June.
Chuck Conner, a third-generation owner of the business founded by his grandfather in 1955, said the new office space offers convenient off-street parking for clients and staff as well as on-site storage for the firm’s plentiful “For Sale” signage, and a newer, brighter work space for staff.
“We have been helping clients move for 65 years, and now it’s our turn to pack up and go,” Conner said.
He noted that the move is symbolic of moving the firm into the future, when ownership and operations will be assumed by Conner’s daughters, Megan Conner and Danica Achin, both licensed Realtors with the firm. In addition to working with buyers and sellers, Megan Conner handles administration and advertising, and Achin is the rental division manager.
“We’re moving toward the future—Danica and myself being the fourth generation coming in,” Megan Conner said. “We’re moving forward.”
For most of the past 65 years, the real estate firm run by the Conners has been located on Main Street—otherwise known as Shop Row.
Chuck Conner’s grandfather Charles Taylor founded the Charles W. Taylor Agency at 85 Main St. in 1955. In 1965, when Taylor passed the business to his daughter, Bernice, and her husband, Bob Conner—Chuck Conner’s parents—the business was run out of the Conners’ Easthampton home.
Around 1980, the Conners reopened the office at 77 Main St., later moving to 87 Main St.—until now. Chuck Conner expects the move to 4A Liberty St. will be complete by mid-June. Liberty Street is off of Union Street, making the new space equally central to downtown and also accessible to walkers and bicyclists arriving via the Manhan Rail Trail.
“We’ll still be steps to downtown,” Megan Conner said. “We are really excited. We’ve all been saying it will be a really nice, fresh start, especially as people are getting back to work after the pandemic closures and getting back to regular routines again. It will be really nice.”
Megan Conner added that the inconvenience of change is dwarfed by the improvements the new space will offer clients and staff.
Chuck Conner said the new office for Taylor Real Estate will provide the same amount of square footage as the Main Street space at about 1,500 square feet. The Liberty Street space will allow for a more open floor plan for Taylor’s roughly 12 full- and part-time agents.
“It has more natural light and good acoustics, which creates a more open-concept and pleasing environment,” Conner added.
While Taylor Real Estate has been a Main Street staple from the start, there have been many changes in its rich, 65-year history, among them a name change. The business was originally the Charles W. Taylor Agency; the name was changed in 2013 to Taylor Real Estate, over three decades after Chuck Conner started working full-time with his parents.
Conner said additional change has come in the form of new technology that allows a digital approach to marketing and communication and the execution of documentation. Houses can be shown to potential buyers via virtual visits made possible by professional photography, and closing papers can be signed electronically.
“We can do almost every aspect of our work remotely with cell phones,” he added.
These advances have come in handy over the past few months, as COVID-19 spread across the region. “People have been very hesitant to be around other people, interacting,” Megan Conner said.
Achin said, “Technology has saved us during this time.”
For more information on Taylor Real Estate, visit www.taylorrealtors.net.
