SuburbanDigs

Remembering Harriet

(Note: While I wrote this piece the day Harriet passed away, I did not post it until early July.)

We lost one of the good ones today. Her name was Harriet Epstein. Around the time I entered real estate, she did too. We never did a deal together but I always heard nice things about her. She left the business after several years. She was married again, happily so and, I guess, didn't need the relentless pressure of real estate in her life. When our office moved to larger quarters nearly 4 years ago, she was cajoled out of retirement to become the front desk manager. Harriet had an interesting background. Now in her fifties, she did not look like someone who had once hung out with rock musicians. In her younger days, though, she had been married to George Wadenius, a member of Blood, Sweat and Tears.

Her nurturing ways made such a difference in an office of dealmakers. When I was on the road, I could always count on Harriet to look up a price or an address. She knew how to fish out errant files after I swore they were missing forever. We talked about our kids, hers just about the ages of my own. At one point, we introduced our daughters, hoping they'd be roommates after college.

One day, I was, as usual, searching for a lost file and klonked myself on one of the metal cabinets. Harriet found the file and remarked that she seemed to be bruising herself a lot. She showed me a huge black and blue mark on her arm. Had she seen a doctor, I asked? No? I said I hoped she would check it out just to make sure nothing was wrong.

As a cancer survivor myself, I probably know more about symptoms of everything than most people. Beginning when I was diagnosed, I spent the next several years reading about illness and death, from "Why We Die," the great book by Sherwin Nuland, to a very large tome called "Diseases - Causes and Complications" to another, "Symptoms and Early Warning Signs." Not a cheerful hobby, but it seemed right at the time and I learned alot and am glad I don't need to do it anymore. I hoped Harriet wasn't sick, but I suspected something was wrong.

Not long after, she was diagnosed with leukemia. Since then, Harriet has been in and out of treatment at Hackensack University Hospital. There weren't that many good days, but she did manage to attend a few of our company parties, hold her first grandson, keep in touch wit our office via her daughters, who were so close to her. She remained in the thoughts of everyone who knew her.

Some months ago, I sent her a note saying I remembered her every day. I wasn't expecting a response but in her careful handwritten response she said hearing from me brought tears to her eyes. And her note brought tears to mine.

After two rounds of chemo, Harriet was well for a bit, then not so well. She came down with a side-effect of leukemia treatment that makes you just as sick as the illness. Her doctors favored a bone marrow transplant but no match was found so Harriet had a stem cell transplant. The first weeks, she rallied and went home until a threat of infection put her back in the hospital.  (I hope I have the facts and chronology correct, but they are close enough!) My colleague, Deborah, was still speaking to her several times a week and Harriet remained upbeat, though very, very tired.

The last few weeks have been exceptionally busy our real estate world. Up early, check dozens of emails, run all day, yap on the cell phone until the battery's dead, meet contractors for estimates, counsel clients worrying about scary home inspections (among other things!), pitch for new business, all this and moments in between to hyperventilate, worry and kvetch. It all seems so very important and it is important.

When you're well, you can't imagine what it's like to be sick, to have a life-threatening illness. Fighting for your life either makes you stronger mentally or takes you down. Harriet believed she would one day be well for her family and was thus able to endure misery and pain.

Her funeral service was packed. The rabbi said he'd presided over many such sad events but none in which there were so many people in one room, mourning a loss. He said that, speaking to Harriet's family and friends, he'd learned that she was universally loved and appreciated for being a good person.

Such a simple notion. So hard to achieve.

   

Changing Market Blues

In the old days -- Spring 2006 -- we in NJ real estate could virtually promise a seller that the home would sell in a weekend or two. That didn't make the rest of the transaction any easier, necessarily, but it did make real estate agents fell pretty good about themselves. It also made sellers very, very happy.

This spring, while some lucky houses priced really pro-actively still get multiple offers and sell in a snap, others simply don't. Agents who have been in the business since the late Eighties or early Nineties, when the market was as slow as molasses, are abt to reminisce (with a wince) about having 27 listings at once, not a one under contract.

We're not at that point, certainly, but even having one or two listings that, despite herculean effort, recently just sat there, unloved, is a responsibility I take seriously. I don't know about other agents, but I wake up mornings thinking about the house, the house, the house. It always feels better if I've done my share of the showings. One of my more expensive listings this spring I showed to 6 different clients --  25 percent of the showings in the first weeks. But neither my peppy demeanor nor the home's very real virtues that would have made it a winner just months ago (updated kitchen and baths, finished basement, hardwood floors) had little impact on buyers. A price reduction didn't do the trick right away, either, although the home did end up doing well for its owner after scaring us all to death.

Still, we're hearing of buyers who insist on offers 20 or 25 percent under the asking price. Sellers take it personally. My house? Worth less than I paid for it five years ago? No way. I'd rather rent.

Today's Star Ledger cheerfuly reports that "Jersey Bucks Housing Decline." While sales nationally declined 6.6 percent through March 31, only the Northeast saw an actual rise of 1.2 percent in housing sales.. During the first quarter of 2007, sales rose 7.6 percent from the previous quarter -- a "sturdy increase," according to one expert. Hmmm.

In fact, starting in April, with ferment in subprime market and tightened lender restrictions, it hasn't been quite so sweet. It's just that the offial statistics haven't caught up with reality: There are more houses listed on the GSMLS, which serves our area, than in recent memory, over 33,000, where there were 19,000 little more than a year ago.

That means buyers in our area have more to choose from after years of virtually no inventory. It also means they are experimenting with some of the lowest offers imaginable: $40,000 under asking? $100,000 under asking? $350,000 under asking? As you're writing some of these numbers on a contract, you wonder how such extreme leveraging will help the economy. An adjustment in the market? Just a little tweak and all will be well? Or will it be a convulsion that shakes the marketplace to its core? And just when we really wondered about all this, we have a listing this past weekend that defies reality: Four offers, all over asking, happy sellers, happy buyers, just like the old days. What is going on?

Making Friends

The 2006 National Association of Realtors Profile of Home Buyers and Seller statistics found that homebuyers are now 2400% more likely to find the property of their choice on the Internet rather than in a home book or magazine!

Meanwhile, Realty Tracker, an online foreclosure portal, interpreting the NAAR's 2007 Member Survey, suggests that Realtors "rethink where and how they spend their money, given NAR's interesting statistic that "websites generated a shockingly low percentage of leads, suggesting that they're more suitable for information-gathering by existing clients or prospects than as lead generators...The median number of customer inquiries originating from Realtor websites was a paltry four."

So where are all these online consumers going? To a small number of prominent Realtor websites, mine (NJDreamHouses.com) included. Don't get me started on why so many Realtors are generating so little internet business, except to say the Internet is a two-way street, best when interactivity is the core business tool. Just having a site sit there, filled with canned "information," won't draw prospective buyers or sellers. Never changing what's on the site -- that's the kiss of death! Without content, interestingly provided, regularly updated, there's nothing to keep people coming back. Without constantly constantly refreshed listings, there's no temptation to explore a site and, in an instant, real estate surfers will flit way. Without a system for recording who's coming and going and remembering who they are, the chances of making friends goes way down. Without tracking people, they'll just find someone else to love.

Making friends? Isn't that what Friendster and MySpace do? Most real estate agents (median age in the US, about 55) aren't usually connected to the hipster world of online connectivity, but they can learn something about one of the things the Internet does best -- link people who otherwise would never have "met." That linkage is the beginning of...well, buyers and sellers who need to know there's someone more human that the Wizard of Oz at the other end of a Realtor website. It's the beginning of building a business, day by day by click by click.

May 31, 2007 I'm going to be expounding on these themes as the speaker at Number1Expert.com's "Webinar" series for Realtors nationwide. Sounds like fun!

 

Bad News Business

Real estate is a funny business to outsiders. At dinner parties, they wink and say things like, "well, you certainly got into the right profession"...as dollar signs emanate from each wink. They also want assurance and advice that the did the right thing by buying this or that property. They love to hear stories from the trenches. I don't know about other Realtors, but I like talking business, I have lots of stories and enjoy these little interchanges.

Real estate is also cruel much of the time. Most people probably couldn't take it, the daily dose of crumbling deals, buyer offers that don't cut it and result in loser phone calls from listing agents just before bedtime, scary home inspections, sellers dying a thousand deaths each day their properties don't sell and suggesting if they lower the price, then how about adjusting your commission, as well?

Most cruel of all? Sellers with whom you have a cordial relationship of longstanding who choose to work with another agent out of expedience/financial gain/lack of loyalty.

Of all the cruelties, that's the one demanding a good cry. If you've developed a relationship with people, if they've been to your home and you to theirs and, through the years, they've thanked you profusely for putting them where they are...then, discovering they've listed with someone else is cause for hurt and upset and a smidgeon of bitterness. These feelings pass quickly, because there are other clients waiting who don't need to know that this is a bad day for you.

This week, people whom I've know for more than a decade, went elsewhere. They'd become friendly with an executive at another company and so were inviting me and a representative of that organization in for chats. Pollyanna that I am, I approached the appointment in a positive way because I couldn't quite believe that based on our history, they'd flick me off once I'd given them insight into preparing their home for the market and offered a competitive commission and my own energetic approach to doing the job well.

After waiting almost 3 weeks for their decision, I figured they were going in the other direction. Still, when word came, it hurt -- and why is it, to give you time to digest the disappointment, that people can't call you BEFORE the listing pops up on the MLS? The phone message came shortly after. In no way should this decision to interpreted as a criticism of your very real talents, Roberta.

No, of course not.

I was on my way to the office when I heard the news. I already have a cold, so it didn't take much to bring on red eyes and stuffed nose. I cancelled a lunch appointment and went home and made eggs, my favorite comfort food. My husband was running out to an important meeting and I didn't want to make a fuss. After all, he'd heard this little jag before. "Well, this hasn't happened a while," he said, sympathetically. No, it hasn't, but it still hurts.

Then, my Baldwin Dream Team colleague, Tamima Friedman, called to say the two offers she'd written yesterday had both been rejected. Our conversation was interrupted with news -- also not so good -- about a foreclosure we're involved in selling. Oh, just a day in the trenches. Then someone called me from Manhattan. He was in the City for a job interview today only and could he drive out to NJ to see some properties?

I dried my sniffles. I had been meaning to call the people who had rejected me, but what was the point? Over and out with that relationship. In with the new. That's what keeps you going in this business. That, and the loyalty and affection that most clients, through thick and thin, reserve for me. It's a blessing.