SuburbanDigs

Long Goodbye

Our holiday cards this year saluted the best clients in the world -- ours. Well, almost all of them are. They’ve been incredibly supportive and loyal through time. But sometimes, you’ve just got to scratch you head and wonder what goes through their minds as they choose not the use you…me -- after years of contact and caring – on their next transaction.

Searching the MLS tonight, a listing came up that, in my mind, rightly belonged to me. Problem was, I didn’t know it was being sold.

Now, I take my professional relationships very seriously. When my clients run businesses, I support them. Through the years, I’ve purchased computers, restaurant gift certificates, art – you name it – to trumpet people who came into my life because of real estate. I’ve attended their concerts, plays and other creative endeavors. Since I’m an inveterate networker, I’ve brought clients with similar interest and careers together, helped their kids get summer jobs. It’s my nature. I love doing it and it’s not just so that, down the line, they’ll come back and do more business with me. But, that is necessarily important to me because, after all, my businesss future is based on keeping in touch with those I’ve served well in the past. Without that effort at continuity, I can’t expect them to remember me; I must hope that all the reaching out and love will come back in a good way.

So, when it doesn’t, how should one feel? It’s not pure misery anymore for me. I’ve been in the business too long. It’s more a combination of anger and surprise that people I’m in touch with and had expectations for would do the right thing – and didn’t.

My mind races through the options open to them: They might have called and said, "Hi, Roberta, we wanted you to know we’re considering using our friend/neighbor to list our home but before we make a decision, we would like you to come in and discuss your marketing campaign, as well."

Or, failing to do that, maybe they’d just courtesy call: "Roberta, we’ve known each other for so many years and, while we cherish the friendship, we’ve decided to use our friend/neighbor to list our home. When you see the listing come up tomorrow, we hope you’ll understand."

Without such closure, I’m left wondering whether I should say something to them or just let it go, focus on the people who want me to work with them again, who view me as an essential element in their lives. How odd it will be, though, when I show their house. For a certain sadness will always be attached to that address. Once upon a time, along with the people inside, it felt as if it belonged to me.

Hello, Old Friends.

Our team will be sending client holiday cards early this year that are focused on giving thanks for what we have in a troubled time. Food banks are depleted, registrations for unemployment insurance are going up and up, retail sales down and down. We might not be making much of a difference with our greetings of the season, given the general mess out there, but as I pour over the mailing list of all those people I’ve worked with over the years, I see each and every one illuminated, their particular stories of striving for home ownership come to vivid life. Some found exactly what they wanted and remain content to this day; others settled in only to wonder about the town and schools and commute they chose but nonethess stayed put; still others, anxious or impatient, are, by now, on house #2 or 3.

From the first to the last name on the mailing list, I see them as they were at our first meetings, successful at their jobs but wet behind the ears at this house-buying stuff, their (usually very young) kids caught in time (backseat of my car or theirs, sucking a pacifer or eating Cheerios or string cheese). These families' individual stories are crystal clear. The frantic quality that defines so many transactions as they're happening has faded.What's left are mostly fond and amusing memories, thank heaven!

Many of my past clients have become good friends. Our natures drew us together in the first place and we have been connected through our lives in the same community, asking for advice, socializing, at the ready in crisis. Others I've worked with saw me as the service provider of the moment, then stepped back and made their own way, only occasionally reaching out through email or to brush shoulders with me at the mall or supermarket. Even those who, as they stretched out their searches way past the norm and made me wonder if they were constitutionally capable of owning property, come to mind this day, their edges distinctly softened.

Last night, at a bustling Montclair, NJ restaurant, I bumped into two clients. The air was warm with good cheer (Greek food does that to people!) and when they rushed over and embraced me, I felt thankful that out there in the ether there are hundreds of people like these, who remember what we meant to each other at a particular time in their lives, and that I was part of that time, in a good way.

A terrific feeling, well worth waiting for.

The Times They Are A Changin'

Three of our clients lost their jobs yesterday. Two were making offers that coincided with their layoffs and, in the absurdity of it, they didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The third was about to resume an earlier home search but for an unexpected pink slip. Earlier this year, two of our deals collapsed at different times over job insecurity, but nothing brought home the fragility of the market, not to mention the very fabric of American life, like this most recent series of events unfolding within minutes of each other.

I’m a wee-hours-of-the-morning newspaper reader. In a few years, if things continue to deteriorate in that industry, I’ll be bringing my laptop to the kitchen table, I guess, to insure my current-events fix. These days, the take away from my sunrise fact-gathering and watching "Anderson Cooper 360" before bed is pure, unadulterated gloom.

Armed with statistics and examples of our societal failures, I must venture out into my little real estate-centric world in an extra-empathic mode. With pad in hand, sitting at other people’s kitchen tables, I find myself asking excruciating financial questions, doing the numbers and trying to come up with solutions without resorting to extreme ones like short sales, auctions, foreclosures or outright bankruptcy.

This week, I advised a client whose affordable, centrally located condo is sitting like a lump, to just forget about selling and investigate refinancing to consolidate her two untenable mortgages. I negotiated payment at closing for home repairs for another client who doesn’t have the cash to fix what he needs to fix before then.  I hunkered down with lovely people who sunk almost $1M into new construction, only to find their current home isn’t saleable for anything like what would pay off the loans they’ve taken to finance the dream house. To the owner of a totally pristine, well-located property I suggested a $50,000 price reduction -- which was followed by virtually no showings.

The Wall Street Journal quoted one builder as saying that in October, ‘home buyers went on strike.’ The hope was, after the election uncertainty passed, buyer enthusiasm would increase again. Not so. They’re definitely still hunkering down for a long term disassociation from all things h-o-u-s-e. CEO Robert Toll of Toll Brothers Inc. said yesterday that the ‘scale and the urgency’ of the problem needed further government action. In unison, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson reflected that his highly-touted, original bank bailout hadn’t resulted in a real loosening of mortgage funds after all and that his program was being adjusted to help banks really help the little guy. Who knows how long it will be before the mechanics really kick in, not to mention whether he's on the right track this time?

For many, like another of my clients, whatever happens will be too little, too late. He’s a sweet guy who's already borrowed deeply from credit cards to keep his mortgage current but finally fell behind. So when he finally heard from his bank this week, six months after first reaching out, that his recently-adjusted mortgage would be frozen at the previous rate, there was no solace. He is deeply in hock; he cannot keep the house.

Meanwhile, the worsening state of affairs at America’s car companies threatens to intensify the angst we’re all feeling because isn’t this our first truly American industry, the one that largely transformed this nation into a many-layered manufacturing and communications culture in the first place and gave us the mobility to go wherever we needed to be to fulfill our respective dreams? But if we can't keep our houses, we certainly can't buy new cars. A daisy chain reveals itself.

My business realm is no where near Detroit geographically, but advertising, marketing and investment sectors that serve Detroit are neighbors, friends and clients on both sides of the Hudson River. Tom Friedman, the New York Times columnist, had the keenest idea yesterday in his thoughtful consideration of the ailing auto biz. "Somebody ought to call Steve Jobs…and ask him if he’d like to do national service and run a car company for a year." We need to think big, don't we!

Indeed, everything and everybody's connected! "All roads, into and out of this crisis, run through the housing market," the New York Times avowed in its Nov 11th lead editorial, "It's About the Mortgages." "Mr. Paulson should be pressing for a streamlined plan that includes permanent modifications to troubled loans. That is the only way to keep Americans in their homes, save the banks and the economy."

Amen.