Many people may have noticed the workmen outside the green building on the corner of state Route 202 and North Bend Way. They’ve been painting the signs for the new and improved Maguire Hill Real Estate offices.

The offices are due to move within the next week. Residents of North Bend are pleased with the change, said Bob Perrell, co-owner of the business with Terry Hill. The building has been deteriorating over the past several years and Maguire Hill Real Estate is bringing it back to life.

“The condition of the building was extremely poor,” said Perrell. “There were years of neglected maintenance, inside and out.”

Improvements were made to the building, which was built as a store and hotel in 1891 by Dustin Tibbetts. The recent improvements included rubberizing the roof, installing new carpets and repainting the downstairs. Hill and Perrell worked with King County and Tonie Cook from the North Bend Community and Economic Development Department to decide how to paint the building and what signage to use.

The business itself is expanding. The top floor will have a training center to teach real estate classes for licensing, a conference room and a computer lab for new licensees as well as resources for people interested in getting licensed and getting advice from agents. The classes will go hand-in-hand with Escrow, a company that reduces fraud by collecting, holding and disbursing funds according to buyer and seller instructions, and other title companies, said Hill.

The downstairs will be reserved for smaller office suites. They are also leasing space to Old Shanty Tavern, which already is in the building. McGuire Hill’s new office will provide 6,150 more square feet of space than the current 2,250-square-foot location.

“We’re excited about going over where we’ll have more room to take care of our clients,” said Bob Allison, agent.

“It will be a transformation of what it is now,” said Ken Suemori, agent. “It’s more convenient for the public, the best location in North Bend.”

Hill and Perrell own their space at 202 W. North Bend Way, but plan to be in business for the next 25 years or so and know they will need more space.

“This is the first time the building has come up for sale in a decade,” said Hill. “We’ve been growing. We started eight and a half years ago. When we opened, we were just a couple of agents and a ton of ideas. Now we have our fifth official office.”

Hill began his career in real estate with the Coldwell Banker business that was housed in the building Maguire Hill’s North Bend office will be moving to.

“I’m kind of coming home in a way,” he said.

Now, the pair have about 80 agents working with them, 35 to 40 of whom are primarily in North Bend – the “flagship” office. There are offices in four other cities: Fall City, Snoqualmie, Cle Elum and Maple Valley. Their goal is to have 15 offices within Puget Sound in the next five years.

“We’re interested in making it all it can be,” said Perrell.

They just put more than $100,000 into a voice-over IP system, said Hill. This means agents can log into their voice mail and e-mail accounts from anywhere and get calls forwarded directly to them from any office phone. If agents can’t reply to voice messages immediately, the system copies the messages from the voice mail and e-mails them to that agent. The system includes 250 different functions, Hill said.

The Web site, www.mhre.com, also will undergo a total makeover within the next 30 days, Hill said. It will have a direct link to featured listings. Since 1998, they have been the first real estate company in the Puget Sound area to offer a menu of services, he said. They put their services out, letting the public know they have different plans with different levels of marketing, and letting people choose the plan they want to use to advertise property, always offering full representation. That’s part of what makes them so successful.

“We have a willingness to work harder,” said Hill. “We make a little less, but we do more business.”

Maguire Hill Real Estate also re-invests profits into new technologies including computers and the new phone system. Hill and Perrell focus on their image and business structure, and they pay their agents more. Each agent starts at 70 percent commission with no desk fees. The two want their agents to be secure to have a better capacity to “wheel and deal” with more of their own money. The business also operates in a “desk-less” system, enabling agents to work out of any of their offices, or from the field.

“We both enjoy what we do,” said Hill. “We don’t stress out. We have a good sense of humor. We like to have fun.”

The current office is located at 202 W. North Bend Way in North Bend. Contact an agent by calling (425) 888-1300.