There’s nothing wrong with the housing market in Gig Harbor. Karl Scherer should know.

For 18 years, he’s been helping local Realtors showcase the area’s homes on the pages of his familiar publication, Realty Review. Scherer’s coverage area includes Gig Harbor and all the rest of Pierce County, plus South King County. The latter is intended more to attract King County buyers to his clients than to actually market their homes.

The strength of Pierce County’s real-estate industry is reflected in the magazine’s size, which runs a healthy 100+ pages. Nearly half those pages are in brilliant, glossy color, a feat that would have been unthinkable when he and his former business partner, Business Journal Publisher Lary Coppola, launched the magazine in 1984.

Although Scherer later bought out Coppola, the two have remained friends over the years. Ironically, although they met here, they actually attended rival high schools at the same time in their hometown of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

“The business has changed dramatically,” says the Gig Harbor publisher. “We used to have to cut-and-paste everything, and now everything is done on the computer. We also used to go around town and pick up the copy and photo orders at the Realtors’ offices. Now, the number of actual pictures we take has dwindled to about 10 percent. And even the scanner is being used less and less often. More agents are submitting photos digitally on disks, or by e-mail.”

In this case, technology has significantly cut overhead expenses. And that has been crucial, given the fact that competition from other real-estate magazines — often owned by large corporations — has increased over the years.

“The technological changes have allowed us to be competitive,” notes Scherer. “They’ve reduced the operating costs dramatically.”

Scherer gets by with one full-time employee, production manager Tracie Balado, who has been with Realty Review for more than two years. He also uses freelancers to do graphics and layout, all of which is accomplished on Mac computers.

“They come in and pick up ad copy, take the work home with them and return it on disks,” says Scherer. The color portion is sent to the printer on CDs; the black-and-white pages are printed out as single copies for the printer.

And, though Scherer has more competition than he did in 1984, the market has grown considerably, meaning bigger shares of the advertising pie for everyone. But Scherer thinks his business has another plus.

“Because we’re independently owned, I feel that we’re better able to provide personal service,” he says. “Our decisions are made here in the area, based on the local market.”

A full-page color ad in Realty Review costs between $429 and $529; a black-and-white page ranges from $220 to $285.

“While we’re not doing the biggest books we’ve ever done in terms of pages, because of the increasing amount of color, the dollar volume is going up,” says Scherer.

Scherer says his sales did drop off somewhat over the winter, after Sept. 11.

“But business has come back strong,” he adds.

In any case, winter is never a peak time for real estate, Scherer notes.

“I’ve always joked that my biggest competitor in December isn’t the other realty magazines, it’s Santa Claus,” he laughs. “People don’t want their houses tromped through at Christmastime.”

Summertime is a different story.

“The sales market seems fairly strong here,” says Scherer. “Pierce has been fairly steady, and I think it was almost a seller’s market at the beginning of the year because of low inventory.”

Scherer’s optimism is borne out by statistics compiled by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service, which show that the median price of a house in Pierce County climbed 7 percent, to $168,500, in the past year. In neighboring Kitsap, the median price rose 3 percent to $162,675.

And pending home sales in Pierce jumped 18 percent between July 2001 and the same month this year. Sales actually dropped in Snohomish, and remained level in King County.

All good news for Scherer, who can spend his off-hours enjoying his passions — boating and fishing — with an easy mind.