Welcom Realty – Our Story

All my life I’ve heard it said that real estate is in my “family’s blood.” The origin of this saying began with my great grandfather who was a barber in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the early nineteen hundreds.

Great grandpa Fahlstrom worked on the first floor of his home, a three-family on Ward Street in Worcester. He wasn’t just any barber, though, he was a barber with a dream - and real estate was his dream.

He worked many long hours, and began to save his money to accomplish his goal. Through a lot of hard work, constant “hen pecking” from my great grandmother, and some good luck, he saved a quite a bit of money by the time of the Great Depression.
He had something that many people of the time didn’t have - he had cash.

Grandpa was fortunate, and as the saying goes, he was “liquid” and he could begin to acquire property, to realize his dream.

Many times he bought something, not necessarily because he wanted it, but because he knew that the person who owned it was in financial trouble and needed help. Over the years he bought property that people said he was nuts for buying. He bought property all over Worcester County. He bought homes and land in the Salisbury Street area of Worcester which was farm land then, and people asked “Why do you want to be way out there?”

Grandpa had a knack for finding “diamonds in the rough.” He bought one commercial property after another on Park Avenue and people thought he was crazy. Then he began to buy three-family after three-family, and people knew he was crazy. In the fifties he began to buy property on Cape Cod. He would go anywhere for a deal and he made it all work - not bad for a barber from Ward Street.

A lot of water has gone under the bridge since my great grandfather began to realize his dream, and I’d like to think that his spirit and vision remain alive today with our firm “Welcom Realty.”

Regards,

Seth A. Welcom
Principal