Longtime EG Real Estate Co. Changes Hands, Keeps Local Flavor

Greg Dantas was made to sell real estate. The local boy who was selling houses to people his parents's age while still in his twenties found a profession ideally suited to his personality: outgoing and hardworking.

That turned out to be a good thing, because Dantas readily admits he wasn’t made to succeed in school, where he was far more interested in being the best-known kid at East Greenwich High School than getting good grades.

“My favorite part of high school was the social part,” he said in an interview last week in his new office at the Old Jail at the bottom of King Street. "That’s probably been one of the biggests boosts to my real estate career – knowing so many kids from the high school."

After years operating under the Remax shingle with David and Len Iannuccilli, Dantas took over Alan Cameron’s shop July 1, keeping a local real estate business in the EG family, so to speak. The new company is called R.I. Real Estate Services and already has 10 agents, including Cameron and Dantas.

He may not have been the best student, but he was always a hard worker. He worked at Thorpe’s Pharmacy through high school, meeting yet more people. “That was a huge bonus to this real estate gig. I got to know everybody in town,” he said.

After graduating (Class of ‘95), Dantas joined the Army, serving for three years. He returned to East Greenwich and fell into the real estate business after David Iannuccilli asked if he wanted to give it a try.

Suddenly, all those people he’d met through school and Thorpe’s were contacts. As a brand new agent, Dantas had an enviable mailing list. In fact, he said, his first listing was with a woman who’d frequented Thorpe’s to pick up things for the man she was caring for.

Things clicked. He’s been selling real estate ever since, averaging 35 sales a year over the past decade.

Before deciding to take over the Cameron office, Dantas had explored buying a franchise real estate office, but he never felt the need to make a move from Remax until Alan Cameron contacted him earlier this year.

"I looked into all the different franchises," he said. "None of them clicked for me culturally. Alan called me this spring … I sat in the building and I said, 'I need to work here.'”

The building, owned by the East Greenwich Historic Preservation Society, still has jail cells. Dantas has his private office in one of them.

He still lives in the same neighborhood he grew up in – Sun Ridge, behind Natale's on South County Trail – but ask him to name the hottest neighborhood in town and he's quick to acknowledge it's the Hill.

"For the first 25 years of my life, it was all about west of Route 2," he said. Now, in addition to the Hill, neighborhoods like Tanglewood and Cindy Ann are turning over. "The replacement cycle is taking over again. You're seeing big wheels and basketball hoops" there.

And, those areas have city water and sewer as well as natural gas lines.

Dantas said East Greenwich is thriving because it's got that small-town feel.

"When I started in real estate, the Grille on Main was the only place to go after work. I’d eat at the bar, talking to Mario," he said, referring to longtime popular bar manager Mario Abbondanza. "All my friends were in Boston, New York, and
I kept telling all of them, 'Talk to me in 10 years. You’re going to want to live in East Greenwich.'"

Now, said Dantas, "every week, one of my friends will call and want to re-locate back to East Greenwich. They drive down Main Street starry eyed," amazed at all the restaurants and shops. "You're seeing small New England towns thriving again."

Dantas likes being a part of that.