Like fathers, like sons: Cressy & Everett.

• Author: Kurowski, Jeff
• Position: Don Cressy and Ed Everett Jr., co-chairmen of Cressy & Everett Better Homes and Gardens real estate firm

Some people can't work together for 44 minutes without having an argument. That's why Cressy and Everett, a 44-year-old real-estate firm spanning two generations, stands out as unusual.

And it is unusually successful because the respect that co-chairmen Don Cressy, 44, and Ed Everett, Jr., 48, have for each other keeps the business running smoothly. That respect is the source of the company's strength.

Currently, the firm's residential sales division, Cressy & Everett Better Homes and Gardens, is the market share leader in the cities of South Bend, Mishawaka and Elkhart. its commercial division, Cressy and Fverett Commercial Company, Inc., was co-developer of the enormously successful University Park Mall, which was the first regional shopping center to open in north-central Indiana.

"Ed Everett has been a wonderful partner and prime mover in the growth of the residential company," says Cressy, who is chairman of the commercial division. "That (selling existing houses) is where his interests are, while my interests are in commercial development."

Everett, chairman of Cressy & Everett Better Homes and Gardens, agrees that it is good for business partners to have separate interests. That way, they can support each other, without one's being tempted to look over the other's shoulder. "We have a mutual respect for each other's area of expertise," Everett says. "There is no jealousy."

The Cressy and Everett partnership (technically, it is a Subchapter S Corporation) is an outgrowth of the post-World War II home-building boom. In 1945, Don's father, George, now 72, and Ed's father, Ed, Sr., now 81, returned to South Bend from military and government service and took jobs with a local contractor selling the houses he was building. "There was a great need for small bungalows on the west side of South Bend for Studebaker and Bendix workers," says Everett.

The elder Cressy and Everett, however, quit a year later to form their own company. "The company they left was more into home building, while they wanted to get into brokerage," says Everett. "They felt brokerage was a better opportunity."

The fathers did not push their sons into the real-estate business. Both sons wanted to become lawyers. They didn't decide upon real estate as a career until after they had earned undergraduate college degrees.

I didn't really have a career goal," admits Everett, who majored in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He wanted to go to law school after he was...