(Feb. 2, 2017) Twenty-five years ago Cam Bunting started a fledgling real estate business in Berlin.
Her father and brother were both agents based in Salisbury, and she was working for Moore, Warfield & Glick in Ocean City, at the time.
“Real estate was in my blood,” she said.
Because virtually all of her listings happened to be in Berlin, she started to look for a way to relocate there, at first looking for a place to work as an agent. When that didn’t happen, she decided to open her own operation, Bunting Realty, Inc.
Bunting bought a former doctor’s office on 24 Broad Street in Berlin, a space large enough that her husband, Woody, could also run his surveying business out of.
Jumping into owning and operating her own office, Bunting said, was not something she thought twice about.
“I’m a type-A person, so I have to be doing lots of things. It was just a normal progression,” she said. “I loved Moore, Warfield & Glick and that was a great experience, but they weren’t real interested in Berlin. I thought the only other thing to do was open my own business.”
With three children still at home and a husband that was self-employed, Bunting admitted the first year was something of a struggle. Still, it wasn’t long before Bunting Realty, Inc. took off.
“It picked up right away,” she said. “At the time Bill Smith had retired, so there wasn’t anybody else here that was really concentrating on this area. At first you do have to establish relationships with people and do everything that’s required of you and do it to the best of your ability.
“The first year was just getting everything going and from there we decided it was too big for just me – we needed some agents,” she added. “Since then it’s just grown and right now a couple of us are in the top percentage of our industry, here in this office.”
A healthy list of clients often meant taking work home with her, and Bunting said she didn’t necessarily have to be awake to be working.
“I’m the type that I would go home and I would dream about somebody looking for a house, and I’d wake up in the middle of the night because I’d thought about a house for them,” she said. “It’s great [finding the perfect home] because they’re so excited that it gets you excited. Right now I can’t ever think about retiring because I love what I do. Why would I not continue to do it as long as I can walk up stairs?
“When you’re either listing or selling for somebody you get to know them and know their family situations, and in some cases when somebody is really desperate to sell you try to do everything in your power to make that happen,” Bunting added.
Again with the type-A personality, Bunting has not only run a successful business she built from the ground up, but has been mother to three children and is a prolific volunteer in the county.
Last April, Bunting and her husband were given the 51st annual Lion’s Club Berlin Award, recognizing their volunteerism. A month later, Coastal Hospice bestowed her with a similar honor.
Volunteering, apparently, is also in her blood.
“When I was a teenager the things I wanted to do were get married, have children and volunteer,” she said. “My parents were big in Salisbury and did a lot of volunteer work, and my brother, Hugh McLaughlin, was on the board of PRMC and I was on the board of AGH.
“Once you start volunteering people know, so you get picked for other things,” she added. “My mother would come over and babysit my three kids so that I could go to the Taylor Museum and scrape paint off with Ed Hammond.”
Bunting said owning her own business allowed her an amount of leniency she wouldn’t have had otherwise. She and Woody worked extensively with Berlin Little League, among other local groups.
“We’ve done quite a few things and enjoyed every minute of it,” she said. “Because you can be a little flexible with real estate, it helps. Not everybody would be able to do it because of their jobs and the time that they have to work. We just worked a lot more at night!”
The couple travel as a way to decompress, and have visited 49 different states – including Alaska – in their motor home. They also take annual trips to Sarasota to watch the Baltimore Orioles during spring training, and a collection of autographed baseballs collected during those visits adorns the office.
The trek to Alaska, Bunting said, occurred “one year when real estate was terrible.”
“We said there’s not much going on here, so we took off two-and-a-half months, which we could do because I have an assistant here and my husband can do his survey drawing,” she said. “But we drove up through North Dakota and went the on Alaska Highway – and broke down on the Alaska Highway.”
Because they had purchased a $65 emergency service plan at Sam’s Club, Bunting said she was able to get a flatbed truck to tow the motor home to a repair shop.
Despite the hiccups, she said the trip was more than worth it.
“That was a neat experience,” she said. “It’s back on our bucket list – we’d like to do that again.”
Paramount Studios also used her office – and her talents – during the filming of “Runaway Bride,” and the producers of “Tuck Everlasting” took up residence inside her building for an extended period of time.
Bunting was a location scout, among other things, for Paramount.
“The list of things that I did just got bigger and bigger,” she said. “I had to find locations for Julia Roberts and Richard Gere and Gary Marshall and Joan Cusack. With their assistance, I’d call up different people and ask them if they’d move out of their house for a couple weeks to move these actors and actresses – and the husbands all said yes and the wives always said no.”
She also housed the casting office for Paramount, played a real-life notary during filming and even appeared on camera in a few scenes in Berlin – and was asked to do more in Baltimore.
“I said, ‘that’s OK,’” she said with a laugh. “But it was a really neat experience.”
As for her other life in the real estate business, Bunting said the industry has changed a lot during her several decades of experience. Thick binders and books have largely become digitized, and she now carries a laptop instead of heavy stacks of papers.
The people, she said, have been the constant.
“People are just so happy and just so overcome with gladness or sadness when they’re selling something that’s been in their family for a really long time. It just makes it all really neat,” she said.
Rather than celebrate the milestone, Bunting said she would take a low-key approach and treat it all as “just another day of work.”
Her father and brother were both agents based in Salisbury, and she was working for Moore, Warfield & Glick in Ocean City, at the time.
“Real estate was in my blood,” she said.
Because virtually all of her listings happened to be in Berlin, she started to look for a way to relocate there, at first looking for a place to work as an agent. When that didn’t happen, she decided to open her own operation, Bunting Realty, Inc.
Bunting bought a former doctor’s office on 24 Broad Street in Berlin, a space large enough that her husband, Woody, could also run his surveying business out of.
Jumping into owning and operating her own office, Bunting said, was not something she thought twice about.
“I’m a type-A person, so I have to be doing lots of things. It was just a normal progression,” she said. “I loved Moore, Warfield & Glick and that was a great experience, but they weren’t real interested in Berlin. I thought the only other thing to do was open my own business.”
With three children still at home and a husband that was self-employed, Bunting admitted the first year was something of a struggle. Still, it wasn’t long before Bunting Realty, Inc. took off.
“It picked up right away,” she said. “At the time Bill Smith had retired, so there wasn’t anybody else here that was really concentrating on this area. At first you do have to establish relationships with people and do everything that’s required of you and do it to the best of your ability.
“The first year was just getting everything going and from there we decided it was too big for just me – we needed some agents,” she added. “Since then it’s just grown and right now a couple of us are in the top percentage of our industry, here in this office.”
A healthy list of clients often meant taking work home with her, and Bunting said she didn’t necessarily have to be awake to be working.
“I’m the type that I would go home and I would dream about somebody looking for a house, and I’d wake up in the middle of the night because I’d thought about a house for them,” she said. “It’s great [finding the perfect home] because they’re so excited that it gets you excited. Right now I can’t ever think about retiring because I love what I do. Why would I not continue to do it as long as I can walk up stairs?
“When you’re either listing or selling for somebody you get to know them and know their family situations, and in some cases when somebody is really desperate to sell you try to do everything in your power to make that happen,” Bunting added.
Again with the type-A personality, Bunting has not only run a successful business she built from the ground up, but has been mother to three children and is a prolific volunteer in the county.
Last April, Bunting and her husband were given the 51st annual Lion’s Club Berlin Award, recognizing their volunteerism. A month later, Coastal Hospice bestowed her with a similar honor.
Volunteering, apparently, is also in her blood.
“When I was a teenager the things I wanted to do were get married, have children and volunteer,” she said. “My parents were big in Salisbury and did a lot of volunteer work, and my brother, Hugh McLaughlin, was on the board of PRMC and I was on the board of AGH.
“Once you start volunteering people know, so you get picked for other things,” she added. “My mother would come over and babysit my three kids so that I could go to the Taylor Museum and scrape paint off with Ed Hammond.”
Bunting said owning her own business allowed her an amount of leniency she wouldn’t have had otherwise. She and Woody worked extensively with Berlin Little League, among other local groups.
“We’ve done quite a few things and enjoyed every minute of it,” she said. “Because you can be a little flexible with real estate, it helps. Not everybody would be able to do it because of their jobs and the time that they have to work. We just worked a lot more at night!”
The couple travel as a way to decompress, and have visited 49 different states – including Alaska – in their motor home. They also take annual trips to Sarasota to watch the Baltimore Orioles during spring training, and a collection of autographed baseballs collected during those visits adorns the office.
The trek to Alaska, Bunting said, occurred “one year when real estate was terrible.”
“We said there’s not much going on here, so we took off two-and-a-half months, which we could do because I have an assistant here and my husband can do his survey drawing,” she said. “But we drove up through North Dakota and went the on Alaska Highway – and broke down on the Alaska Highway.”
Because they had purchased a $65 emergency service plan at Sam’s Club, Bunting said she was able to get a flatbed truck to tow the motor home to a repair shop.
Despite the hiccups, she said the trip was more than worth it.
“That was a neat experience,” she said. “It’s back on our bucket list – we’d like to do that again.”
Paramount Studios also used her office – and her talents – during the filming of “Runaway Bride,” and the producers of “Tuck Everlasting” took up residence inside her building for an extended period of time.
Bunting was a location scout, among other things, for Paramount.
“The list of things that I did just got bigger and bigger,” she said. “I had to find locations for Julia Roberts and Richard Gere and Gary Marshall and Joan Cusack. With their assistance, I’d call up different people and ask them if they’d move out of their house for a couple weeks to move these actors and actresses – and the husbands all said yes and the wives always said no.”
She also housed the casting office for Paramount, played a real-life notary during filming and even appeared on camera in a few scenes in Berlin – and was asked to do more in Baltimore.
“I said, ‘that’s OK,’” she said with a laugh. “But it was a really neat experience.”
As for her other life in the real estate business, Bunting said the industry has changed a lot during her several decades of experience. Thick binders and books have largely become digitized, and she now carries a laptop instead of heavy stacks of papers.
The people, she said, have been the constant.
“People are just so happy and just so overcome with gladness or sadness when they’re selling something that’s been in their family for a really long time. It just makes it all really neat,” she said.
Rather than celebrate the milestone, Bunting said she would take a low-key approach and treat it all as “just another day of work.”