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New owners of Burgan Real Estate tout double-digit growth
YOUNGSTOWN
Since Patrick Burgan and Sue Filipovich took over their family business, Burgan Real Estate has set company record after company record, nearly doubling its sales volume.
“We had the best quarter in company history. We had the best individual month in June. We did over $12 million in sales volume in June,” said Burgan. “We’ve had 41 years of consistent growth, and we’re just having a fantastic year.”
Burgan and Filipovich bought the company – which operates in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties with about 45 agents – in January 2017. Their respective fathers, John Burgan and Leon Turek, founded the real estate company in 1977.
Patrick Burgan and Filipovich are no strangers to the business. Patrick started working there in high school as a custodian. Sue started out cleaning and answering the phones.
“Burgan has been a part of our lives since birth,” Patrick said. “Now we’re really taking it upon ourselves to take it to the next level.”
They credit their fathers with putting in place a company culture that has allowed the success they’ve had since taking over operations.
“The way our fathers built the organization ... is something you can’t buy,” Sue said, noting that values such as family, excellent customer service and employees working together as a team were instilled by the company founders.
When the time came to transition to the next generation of owners, their goal was to build on that foundation.
“We really wanted to give the company focus. We set in place some strategic goals and plans,” said Patrick.
One of those initiatives was to hire a marketing firm to get their message out in the Mahoning Valley.
“We are really trying to leverage our assets and the things that make Burgan, Burgan – we really want to relay those to the agents and to the residents of the community,” Patrick said.
A change that grew out of that was a rebranding with the new slogan, “Better with Burgan.”
“We realized how much our culture mattered, and we were trying to think about how to express that,” Patrick said. “Whether it be your career, your training, your home – every aspect of Burgan Real Estate, being a part of Burgan is better.”
Another initiative Patrick and Sue spearheaded was getting the business more involved in the local community. One way they’ve done that is by sponsoring Youngstown State University athletics.
Along with the company culture, Patrick and Sue attribute some of the business’ success to the fact that it is locally owned and operated.
Although locally based, Burgan’s reach goes beyond the Valley through its involvement with Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, an invitation-only real-estate organization. Members can list properties all over the world using a network of partners.
Looking ahead, Patrick and Sue believe the best is yet to come.
In the coming years, they want to reach more people and continue to grow. They have already started offering some new services, such as the new Burgan Auctions division. Plans to create other ancillary services are in the works.
“We’ve been in the community for 41 years,” Patrick said. “While we’re talking about the records we’ve set this year, I believe we’re just getting started. We’re just scratching the surface of our capabilities.”