Crye-Leike opens first branch office in Georgia            With Catoosa County being the fastest growing real estate market in the Tri-State area and North Georgia, Crye-Leike, the largest real estate company in the Mid-South and Tennessee, has opened its first branch office in the state of Georgia, Monday, Nov. 27 in Fort Oglethorpe.      Crye-Leike’s Fort Oglethorpe branch office is located in Crye-Leike Plaza, named after the company’s founders, Harold Crye and Dick Leike. Crye-Leike Plaza is located directly across from the Wal-Mart Super Center on Battlefield Parkway. The building is a 23,000-square-foot office plaza on 6.5 acres of land in Catoosa County that was just built and completed by Crye, chief executive officer of Crye-Leike.      “Crye-Leike’s Fort Oglethorpe branch office will occupy a significant portion of the plaza space, accommodating 40 sales associates with room for expansion into a larger facility, if necessary,” said Crye. “The remaining space is available for lease as retail and office space.”      “Crye-Leike already has had a lot of its sales associates doing business in North Georgia even before we had an office there,” said Jack Webb, vice president and general manager of Crye-Leike Realtors in Chattanooga. “Out of the 230 sales associates with Crye-Leike in the Metro Chattanooga area, 100 of them are already licensed to do business in North Georgia.      “Our Crye-Leike Fort Oglethorpe office will compliment and add to our existing seven branch offices that serve the real estate community in the Greater Chattanooga area,” he continued.      Offices are currently located in Athens, downtown Chattanooga, Cleveland, East Brainerd, Hixson, Signal Mountain and Soddy Daisy.      Crye-Leike has secured the top real estate sales associate in the North Georgia area, Randy Durham, to be its sales manager and broker for the Fort Oglethorpe office. Durham recorded over $9.4 million in sales volume in 1999 while associated with Realty Center Better Homes & Gardens in Fort Oglethorpe.      While only being in the real estate business since 1993, Durham has made his mark by serving in leadership positions within the real estate community. He currently serves as president-elect of the Chattanooga Association of Realtors, which includes the North Georgia area, and is a state director for the Tennessee Association of Realtors, a position he has held since 1998. He served as past president of the Northwest Georgia Council of Realtors in 1997, the first year after the Georgia Board merged with the Chattanooga Association of Realtors, and was state director of the Georgia Association of Realtors in 1996 and 1997. He was voted three times among his peers as “Most Professional Realtor.”      “Some sales associates from other Crye-Leike branch offices will be transferring to this new location to better serve their clients, as well as new sales associates who have expressed an interest,” said Durham.      Crye-Leike’s Fort Oglethorpe branch office will be open seven days a week. Crye-Leike also offers the only fully-automated appointment center in the Tri-State area, according to Durham.      “We make it easy for any real estate agent in the area who wants to show a Crye-Leike property to be able to make an appointment for a showing,” said Durham. “The appointment center is open 12 hours a day, seven days a week, coordinating showings from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. It’s customer service value is reflected in the number of calls Crye-Leike receives daily, which totaled 1,213 for the month of October for listing appointments set in the Greater Chattanooga area.”      The company also offers “SmartLine,” an automated 24-hour information line which allows potential buyers instant access to information about a home 24 hours a day, seven days a week while giving sales associates instant notification of callers on the listings.      In Chattanooga, Crye-Leike continues to show a strong percentage of growth in quarterly sales since its offices were established in 1998, up 23.41 percent in the third quarter compared to the same period last year.      The company attributes its steady growth to its aggressive expanded presence and menu of services in the market.      “In the past two and one-half years, Crye-Leike of Chattanooga has grown from four branch offices to soon eight branches in the Greater Chattanooga area and from 95 to 230 sales associates,” said Webb.      Crye-Leike is independently owned and operated. The company’s sales volume of $3.3 billion in 1999 ranked it No. 10 among the nation’s top 500 residential real estate brokerage firms, as reported in May 2000 by REAL Trends Magazine.