For 60 years, real estate has been a family affair at Adams, Cameron & Co.
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ORMOND BEACH — For a homegrown company where business always has been a family affair, the past 22 months have been challenging ones at Adams, Cameron & Co. Realtors, a fixture in the area’s real estate industry that is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year in Volusia and Flagler counties.
That milestone is occurring in the wake of the death of the company’s longtime CEO Robert “Bob” Adams, who died in January 2022, just three months shy of his 80th birthday.
News of his death inspired a tsunami of tributes, including more than 1,000 posts on social media by array of residents, local leaders and area Realtors — including many from competing firms — who had been mentored by Adams since he joined the family business in 1971.
That list of Adams proteges includes his oldest son, John Adams, the company’s president, who is still adjusting to life without his father’s presence at Adams, Cameron, the area’s largest real estate firm with 300 agents in seven primary offices in Volusia and Flagler counties.
“He was my father,” Adams said on a recent afternoon surrounded by family photos at the company’s Ormond Beach office. “He was my mentor; he was my business partner. It’s almost two years now. It was extremely difficult.”
At the same time, Adams is heartened by the tributes and messages of support from so many corners of the industry. With his younger brother Ryan Adams among its leading sales associates, the company remains rooted in family connections that go back to the company’s founder, Helen Adams, Bob’s mother and John’s grandmother, who started the firm in 1963.
“I’ve tried to take over more of a leadership role,” Adams said of the operation of the business since his father’s death. “I’m definitely following in his footsteps. He was a force to be reckoned with.”
Company's founder was 'ahead of the times'
That also could be said of the company’s founder, Helen Adams.
She started Adams, Cameron in 1963, a few years after she and her husband, Jack, moved their family to the Daytona Beach area from Buffalo, New York. It was a time when there weren't many women in the real estate business, much less owners of their own firms.
The couple embarked on a stint running a small motel in what is now Daytona Beach Shores in the 1950s, but each wound up taking day jobs to help make ends meet. Helen started working in real estate and Jack became a real estate appraiser.
Due to attitudes in the industry at the time, Helen Adams became a progressive force out of necessity, her grandson said.
“None of the men ever wanted to come work for her, so she ended up hiring a lot of women,” John Adams said. “Now, there are a lot of women in our industry, so she was ahead of the times on that.”
Helen Adams, who died at age 87 in 2013, also became an influential force in the area’s real estate industry, serving as a past president of the Daytona Beach Area Association of Realtors, a Realtor Emeritus, a past Realtor of the Year and former recipient of the Realtor's Lifetime Achievement Award.
After nearly two decades as Adams Family Realty, the company changed its name to Adams, Cameron in 1978 when it merged with Cameron Real Estate to become the area's largest real estate brokerage, with four offices and 80 agents at the time.
Dave Cameron, owner of Cameron Real Estate, became vice president of the company until his retirement in 1980.
In the years since, Adams, Cameron has continued to grow, through additional acquisitions that include its 2006 purchase of the real estate arm of Hayward Brown. The company also launched an affiliated business called Adams, Cameron Title Services.
Through it all, the company’s family ties remained strong.
John Adams remembers getting advice from his grandmother in his early days at the company, about 20 years ago.
“When I first started, she would call me and tell me what I needed to do,” he said. “She was always sweet about it, but she knew how she wanted things done.”
When John Adams decided to join the company in 2003, he had been working as chief operating officer of an online marketing company in Chicago. He had been at a business conference in Orlando when his father posed the prospect of joining the family business.
“He said he could use me, and it was 11 or 12 degrees in Chicago in November, just coming into the cold season,” Adams said. “I called home and told my wife, ‘Honey, we should give this a shot.’ A month later I was here.”
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Institutional knowledge passed from multiple generations
Despite the potential interpersonal complications of working with his grandmother, father and brother, Adams said that the family dynamic was “fantastic.”
He recalls regular lunch meetings with his father roughly three times a week at favored spots that included Billy’s Tap Room in Ormond Beach. There, the topics would range from real estate trends to the latest family news.
“My father and I really enjoyed each other’s company,” Adams said. “He really knew the business and he was fantastic to learn from. He had so much real estate knowledge.
“He had been in the business for 50 years at the time that he passed. He had the kind of institutional knowledge that just doesn’t exist anymore.”
That combination of knowledge and hands-on personal attention has been the key element of longevity for Adams, Cameron, said Joe Gaeta, director of strategic growth at Lake Homes Realty, a Birmingham, Alabama-based company that’s considered the top lake-focused real estate company in the country.
Gaeta, who has worked with real estate brokerages for nearly 25 years, said that Adams, Cameron has an enviable reputation.
“You don’t feel like you’re a number with these folks,” he said. “When you look at real estate from a 30-story view, so much of it is the large brands, the Coldwell Bankers, but the brand isn’t so much important, it’s the quality of the human that will pick up the phone, answer your questions.
“In Daytona Beach, it’s having someone who knows Intracoastal, knows the flood map. They don’t just have a lightning tongue, they know what they are doing. For a buyer or a seller, that’s very important.”
Investment in training reflects outlook for the future
Looking ahead, the company is focused on staying ahead of industry trends to build on the legacy established over six decades, Adams said.
“My father and my grandmother knew the complexities of the market, because to a large extent they created it,” he said. “At the same time, you can’t rely on what you used to do 60 years ago. You have to know what people will be doing 10 years from now.”
To do that, the company invests in ongoing marketing training and resources for its agents, he said.
“That’s not only about our agents hitting their goals,” he said. “It’s about taking the best possible care of our buyers and sellers.”
Although rising interest rates that are creeping toward the 8% threshold are putting pressure on the real estate industry, Adams doesn’t foresee a drastic decline reminiscent of the record 12.4% drop in the median existing-home price in the United States in late 2008.
More: Volusia-Flagler see uptick in high-end home deals, despite overall dip
“I think prices will level off in Florida,” he said, adding that Volusia-Flagler remains a highly desirable market with a high demand for homes.
In addition to a continuing influx of retirees, the advent of remote workplaces in the wake of the pandemic also has spurred demand for homes in desirable destinations, he said.
“People don’t have to live where they work,” Adams said. “If you’re in Chicago, why spend two hours on a train to work when you could live 1/4-mile from the ocean for less money. We have an amazing lifestyle here. We’re still very much a destination.”
Made Just Right: About this series
The Daytona Beach News-Journal is spotlighting area businesses that have been around long enough to be an important part of our collective history. If you are the owner of a business that has been in operation for at least 25 years, or if you want to nominate a business for recognition, please contact reporter Jim Abbott at jim.abbott@news-jrnl.com Be sure to include your name, phone number and a little bit about the history of the business.
Timeline: 1963
When Adams, Cameron & Co. opened its doors in 1963, here’s a snapshot of what else was happening in the world:
Due to cost of daily maintenance and repairs, Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary closed in San Francisco Bay.
President Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, while riding in a motorcade in Dealey Plaza in Dallas.
The United States Postal Service launched the ZIP Code System.
The Beatles released “I Want To Hold Your Hand” and “I Saw Her Standing There,” setting the stage for Beatlemania and the British Invasion.
American automaker Studebaker ceases production and goes out of business.
The United States Senate ratified the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, banning all nuclear weapon testing that was not conducted underground.
An oral polio vaccine which is available nationwide in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Astronaut Gordon Cooper flies NASA's final Project Mercury mission launching from Cape Canaveral.
Fast Facts
WHAT: Adams, Cameron & Co. Realtors, real estate firm celebrating 60 years in business in Volusia and Flagler counties.
WHERE: The family-owned company has 300 agents with eight offices in both Volusia and Flagler counties, as well as a sister business, Adams, Cameron Title Company, launched in 1982.
ONLINE: adamscameron.com
CALL: 386-253-8044
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Adams, Cameron & Co. Realtors marks 60 years in Volusia-Flagler
