June 2018

92 93 SLIFER SMITH & FRAMPTON REAL ESTATE opened. In 1968, he founded his own brokerage, Slifer & Company and, over the years, as the ski areas in the two counties continued to grow, so did Slifer & Company and Vail Associates Real Estate. In 1986, Harry Frampton and Mark Smith formed East West Partners, developers of the Beaver Creek Resort in the nearby town of Avon. In 1988, Frampton and Smith opened Frampton & Smith Real Estate, concentrating on the new- ly-formed Beaver Creek market. In 1994, the two top dueling powers of Vail Valley real estate, Slifer & Company, and Frampton & Smith Real Estate, merged to form Slifer Smith & Frampton Real Estate. Today, Slifer Smith & Frampton is part of the East West Partners family of companies. East West Partners is devoted to building, selling, managing, and supporting high-quality real estate and life experiences. It features a real estate development division, a resort management division, and Slifer Smith & Frampton, which represents the real estate sales division. “We are also directly affiliated with Vail Resorts, which owns the main ski areas here –Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, and Keystone,” adds John Pfeiffer, the compa- ny’s President and Managing Broker. Slifer Smith & Frampton is also a member of Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, the largest global network of premier, locally branded com- panies.Whenever a property is posted to Slifer Smith & Frampton’s local website, it is immedi- ately promoted on the LeadingRE.com website, which then connects the listing to the websites of over 565 affiliated real estate firms, encompass- ing 4,100 offices and 130,000 sales associates in 65 countries. Locally, Slifer Smith & Frampton has 25 office locations in Eagle and Summit Counties, 162 brokers, 75 staff members, and 15 executive team members, including the three original part- ners, who Pfeiffer says are “still very much active in the company.” Pfeiffer believes that the main reason that Slifer Smith & Frampton controls 40-50 percent of the market share in its communities is because of its decades-long presence in the Vail Valley. “Because our partners were the founders of much of these valley areas, their names, and the company name, have been in existence for so long, people want to be a part of that history,” he states. “Our clients don’t want to work with franchises; they want to work with a luxury boutique, local firm that has local roots. That’s the key differential –we are the history of these communities.” Another reason for the company’s success, ac- cording to Pfeiffer, is its existence in a core village resort market with heavy foot traffic. “We have such an incredibly diverse clientele,” he states. “People from all over the world travel here to experience and be a part of this, so we get a lot of business that walks in. That’s unique in real estate, nowadays.”A third advantage is the price range of the properties that the company deals with. “Our average price point is $1.5 million per closing, and the industry standard is around $400,000. So that makes our situation incredibly unique, as well. So, we are blessed with location, clientele, and history– all three.” And the company is still growing. “We’ve JOHN PFEIFFER President and Managing Broker