1974: After his first year in real estate he enrolled again in Anthony Real Estate School to take the necessary courses to obtain a real estate brokers license. By October 1974 he had completed his courses, took the DRE Brokers exam and had his Brokers License. He then became the manager of South Bay Realty, now with 8 agents, which had moved to the then GEMCO shopping center at the intersection of Blacow Ave and Mowry Ave in Fremont.

1976: In the early 1970’s the CENTURY 21 Real Estate franchise had made its entrance into the real estate market. After listening to a presentation Alan approached his Broker about becoming a CENTURY 21 franchise office and his counter offer was for Alan to buy him out and buy a CENTURY 21 franchise for the office. I did buy him out for $5,000, bought a franchise and moved CENTURY 21 Bishop Realty to a 1,000 s/f commercial store front location at 39175 Alvarado Blvd in Union City. 

1981: As the market became depressed in the early 80’s and the interest rates were at 16% Alan married Yvonne on Sept 27, 1981 and then had an essentially other marriage as he entered into partnership with Ted Chedwick in Feb 1982. The partnership made the cost to operate our $9,500 per month operation bearable. The market made a come back and our office of 1,000 s/f grew to 4,000 s/f. Yvonne began her real estate career in January 1984.

1988: In March 1988 we opened a second office in Fremont at the Ardenwood shopping center located at Paseo Padre Pkwy and Deep Creek Rd. We now had two offices and in 1989 we closed over 800 real estate transactions and did $3,900,000 in GCC as a company. CENTURY 21 Bishop Realty was on a roll.

1991: In the cycle of real estate the market turned down and we needed another form of income so we opened a mortgage company, Associated Mortgage Group. It provided a great opportunity for us to assist our client with their financial needs and have a new revenue source.

1995: In February 1995, after five years of slow real estate, CENTURY 21 Mission Realty, owned by Jayne Gordon and Joe Abreu, contacted us and said they wanted to buy our mortgage company.   We had grown fond of AMG and said that it was not for sale. So they made a counter offer. They asked if we would be interested in talking about merging our two offices. After four months of meetings we officially merged the two companies. CENTURY 21 Mission-Bishop Real Estate officially began business in May 1995 with 135 agents in three locations throughout Fremont and they now had a mortgage company, Associated Mortgage Group.

1997 - 2004: Two years after the merger, Jayne Gordon submitted her buy out request to the remaining three partners. In 1999 Joe Abreu submitted his buy out request and in 2004 Ted Chedwick requested a buy out. Officially on June 1, 2006 the company was under the ownership of Alan and Yvonne Bishop and today is a women owned company as Yvonne owns 51% of the corporation.

With over 30 years in the bay area real estate business, we have seen almost everything. Interest rates of over 16% and as low at 4%. We have witnessed appreciation as high as 30% and seen property values drop over 22% in two years. Truly, real estate is a challenging and a changing business. 

If there is one thing we have learned about real estate it is that, “You don’t wait to buy real estate, you buy real estate and wait.” Time is always on your side in real estate. 

Being part of the CENTURY 21 family has always provided our agents with the best tools and the best brand to use to market themselves to their clients and community.