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Stacking Stones

One…

Back in 2006 I took a vacation to Montego Bay, Jamaica with a friend of mine from New York City. Connie Rosengarten was one of the class mom’s and all around presence at PS6 in Manhattan when both my boys attended elementary school there.  Connie had a theater background and was always ready for an adventure, so with my blank passport I headed to Half Moon Bay to center myself after a particularly hard work experience.

Once I was on the island I learned a couple of things.  Steps from the elegant resort were families living in huts.  But instead of envy or bitterness I found many of the Jamaicans to have a “No Worries” attitude because they embraced each day and were thankful and appreciative of the sun rise.  They gave a face to the word “Perspective”. Each of us are in control of how we react and endure life’s twists and turns.

On the island along the water there are caves and in the alcoves I found hundreds of stones piled up.  The white stones lined the water’s edge but I didn’t understand why they were piled in all different fashions.  One of the locals told me that the stones were stacked by both Jamaicans and people who visit the island.  It was symbolic of starting over. Each day you have the power to reshape your life, your attitude and the way we react to life’s challenges.  The stones are a reminder that we can rebuild with what is already within reach. It was also symbolic of the fact that everyone wants to leave their mark on this world.

I took 3 stones from the water’s edge in Jamaica back with me to Milwaukee. They are one of my most prized possessions and the stones are proudly perched on my dresser. Every morning when I get up I reposition the stones.  Each day I start again, I rebuild.

We are in the business of finding people places to live.  We come into their lives at the most emotional parts of their life journeys.  Births, deaths, new jobs, job loss, marriage and in some cases divorce.  We come into their lives when their life path diverts.  But it is important to remember the house shelters, but it does not define people. The memories, and our lives move on through, inside and outside of four walls.

This column is going to be about everything and nothing at all. It is just my corner to speak out about reinvention and about living life with arms wide open.  It is going to be about what I think we need in this world to keep families moving forward. Change starts small… but when we stack the stones we get a foundation that protects, shelters, empowers and joins us in common goals.

Cornerstone Realtors is a firm dedicated to cradling families through the changes in their lives… one family at a time.

- Mary Beth Waite

Two…

While in Boston for school I became good friends with another fabulous red head from South Boston in the same television program. She begged me to take a broadcast journalism class with her. The professor had a reputation for starting out with 30 students at the beginning of the semester dramatically whittling it down to a mere handful at the end of the term.  The Professor was tough, she expected a passionate commitment to news, to disseminating the facts and in that journey ultimately help the public gain personal perspective.  Because I have always been passionate about world events, I was game and agreed to take the class with my friend to help her through it.  After one week she dropped out, and I stayed for 3 years.

My evolution from Theater into Broadcast Journalism was an unexpected turn. It ended up being an amazing part of my life. While in school I worked as a stringer for the Associated Press, wrote copy for the early morning news at a local Boston TV station. This was done in addition to side jobs babysitting, working as a cleaning lady, serving up ice cream at Hagen Daaz on Charles Street and opening Montello’s Bakery at Fanuiel Hall.  I packed a ton of things into my years in Boston before getting my first job at WLUK-TV in Green Bay as early morning anchor followed by stints in Rochester New York, Pensacola, Florida, New Haven Connecticut & Washington, DC.

I tell people my experiences as an anchor and reporter around the country for ten years were the best possible training for real estate sales. I was blessed with a job where I got to meet people from all around the country and they would share their stories.  They opened the door into their personal successes and challenges for me to better understand their lives.  There are many more threads that bind us than divide us. 

After 10 years reporting and moving 13 times in 7 years with 2 children, I decided I needed to plant roots when we got to New York City. Because my husband was a union TV News Photographer, he suggested I seek a new career so we could stay put for the kids in school.   One of the mothers in my son’s kindergarten class was a real estate agent with Halstead Property in Manhattan.  She introduced me to Clark Halstead and Diane Ramirez and they kindly took “Dairy Girl” as I was nick named under their wings and taught me the business.  They showed me how to help people buy and sell real estate. Clark Halstead said even though I had no experience, no sphere of influence in New York City …I had gumption so he told me to look at the market, find the hole and he would fit me in.  He told me to use my reporting background to research the market… to break it down like facts of a story I was reporting and connect people to places where they could live. My life took another unexpected turn and I ended up meeting people that have become powerful forces in my life and the lives of my sons. 

What I discovered was most times people have specific ideas, a wish list of sorts that serves as a map to find a home or condo to buy.  Sometimes they would ignore options because it does not fit into their road map… but I found by opening people up … by taking unexpected turns they found amazing places to call home.

As Realtors we come into peoples lives at moments of change. Births, Deaths, Marriages, Divorce, Job Loss, New Job, Job Change. Sometimes life gives us an unexpected turn.  We can embrace it or fight it.  A Judge in Wauwatosa recently told me as a Real Estate agent I know how to talk to people… but to tell you the truth it means more when I listen.  I need to pay attention to their needs, find out what is important and how it makes them feel.  That is my journey. My Road map for each family, Buyer or Seller we serve.

- Mary Beth Waite

Three…

After a brief stint partnering with another Halstead agent to find my sea legs, the management gave me a desk on the 3rd floor in the East Side Halstead office.  This was the floor with the power hitters, the seasoned agents.  While I know it was meant to keep my education moving forward it also came with a unique challenge. They gave me a desk with a window overlooking Madison Avenue.  Want to build a wall with new coworkers… have management give you a desk with a window.   I was quickly dismissed as Wisconsin “Dairy Girl” who talks too loud, types too fast and asks too many questions. At the beginning I was barely tolerated. I tried a common Wisconsin custom of bringing food into the office to soften the blow of my newness, but it did not win anyone over. (At least not at first).

My kids’ school was just around the corner so I would come into the office right after I dropped them off and start scrolling through all the available properties, trying to digest as much about pricing and building information as possible.  Shortly after I made a pathway to the 3rd floor residency is when my marriage started to fail. I took advantage of the early morning hours when no one else was in the office to call my friends and figure out how I was going to move forward with my life.

One morning I had ended a particularly challenging call and was crying at my desk with a view. To my embarrassment, I did not realize another agent who sat diagonally from me had come in.   Rodney was British, formerly a protocol attaché for Queen Elizabeth’s military in the Far East.  He wore blue blazers with beautiful ties and the occasional ascot. Rodney was regal… and tall. As much as I envied his business volume and real estate knowledge, he was one of my most vocal critics.    But this morning instead of complaining about the speed of my typing he pulled his chair over to my desk and handed me a hankie.

What evolved was the most incredible story of how he had his own marriage challenges which descended into alcoholism.  He lost his family, ending his first marriage and at one point was homeless sleeping on the pews at St. Patrick’s Cathedral after being banished to New York.  I was astonished. I would have never expected the path this elegant man’s life had taken.  He was open and raw, and I saw his pain for the first time.  He was kind. His biggest regret was losing his relationship with his daughter, and he told me to focus on my kids.  He told me how he recovered, how he bloomed, how he learned to find his way.

After that day, Rodney became my biggest supporter, encouraging those on the 3rd floor to give me a chance. He opened doors both literally and figuratively for me to learn about Real Estate in New York.  Rodney and I became good friends. When Rodney and his beautiful 2nd wife would go on vacations, I would babysit their cats.  

Eventually the entire 3rd floor agent group became known within the firm for their closeness and support. Despite a rough start we became a closet knit group of competitors which cared deeply about each other. We evolved. We were known as “The Third Floor” all of us as one.  When the Halstead moved the East Side office to a new location, the President of the company kept the 3rd Floor agents together, desks side by side, no walls, no complaints with one huge window with a new view.  The enormous window also became the “3rd Floor” watercooler as  we came to know the woman who cleaned a low floor condo across the street from our desks . Each Wednesday, the woman cleaned in the nude.  It became a ritual with us standing there each week trying to figure out why she does not close the drapes. Should we send her a letter letting her know we could see…. This time we all shared the window.

One vacation right before retiring, Rodney came back with a gift for me.  It was a blue vase. The note inside said, “No matter what happens, keep blooming, learning, remember the vase like life is meant to be full.

Not long after Rodney retired to Hilton Head he passed away.   When I close my eyes, I can still see him in his crisp blue jacket. Rodney was a life raft for me when I felt lost at sea. Sometimes just one person can help you navigate home.  We are all flawed and sometimes the most wonderful support can come from a stranger who suddenly changes the dynamic with a simple hello and a conversation. I often think about this journey and wonder why more people can not find common ground?

When it came to opening my own firm, I wanted Cornerstone Realtors to be a place that connects people.  Moving to a new city, a new home, a new job can be daunting. By connecting people, we try to make the transition a little easier.  Each day is a chance to regroup and start again.  That’s the way we work.  Each day is like that Blue Vase… just waiting to be filled.

- Mary Beth Waite

Four…

Also, most could not hold two properties for the time it would take to renovate.  As a result, many people would rather wait and save more money to pay more for renovated units.  However, my research showed the cost of buying fixer upper plus renovations was less than the mint properties already fixed up.  Having grown up in a household with a Dad working in the stock market I was all about the numbers by osmosis.  I believed it was a stronger investment in an aggressive rising market to buy a fixer upper.

I had a plan…since there was no MLS in Manhattan at that time, I thought I could brand myself to handle their renovations after closing for no extra fee if they agreed to work with me exclusively.  In those years many real estate firms in Manhattan did not co-broke all their properties.  That means you could work with a Buyer for a full year and then they could go and see one condo with an agent from a competing firm and you would have nothing to show for your years’ worth of toil.  Normally Buyers had at least 1 agent at every firm when I started out.

Clark Halstead never had anyone propose such a business model.  He wondered how it would be accomplished.  I told him with a handshake. And that while I would be investing a ton of my own post transaction time, I would be learning about construction and ultimately planting seeds in my Client/Customer farm.  After he stopped laughing at the whole “Handshake” thing… he told me it was a bold idea, but I needed to get some additional tools to accomplish it.  With Clark’s help I ended up being tutored by one of New York’s prominent East Side Interior Designers, along with Virginia Bruce, CEO of an Intellectual Property marketing firm to learn how to brand myself.  Then Clark helped me out by personally mentoring me with the real estate nuances. And just like that a page was turned…a new career was born.  Focusing on assisting people with pre & post-closing construction defined my business model and was/is a defining factor of my Real Estate career ever since. 

“Dairy Girl” as I was affectionately known, researched architects, renovation teams, coop & condo board construction rules and regulations and learned how to drive the post-closing bus for my Buyer’s property updates.  It started out slow… just one client.  Since I had no sphere other than my news media contacts, I went to a TV Producer and asked him to let me find him a place to live, give me a budget and I would project manage the renovation at no fee for him after closing.   It was a leap of faith for both of us.

This is where being the “Garden Club Mom” at PS6 my kids school came in handy. Three days a week I would take a group of kids to a classroom for lunch and teach them about flowers and gardening.  There was 10 feet of grass on two sides of my kids’ public school so we would spend part of the lunch hour tilling the soil in Manhattan.  Since my Real Estate firm had a very strict attire policy, it meant changing into overalls at lunch then back into my heels for the afternoon. Good thing the school was literally around the corner from my office.

One of my student’s father was a super for a Sutton Place COOP and he appreciated how much fun his kids were having learning about worms with me.  He also knew I was in the process of getting a divorce and wanted to help me since I had just started a new job.  He gave me a heads up about a unit where he worked that would be coming to market soon.  A woman had passed away. It was a small 2 bed / 2 bath unit with a balcony and slight side view of the East River.  You just needed to look past the pink shag carpet and the metal angled Doris Day /Rock Hudson kitchen cabinets.  It was a diamond in the rough. Getting the inside scoop helped us get the unit before it came to market.   Once again… a seed bloomed.

My Buyer got the unit and gave me a $50,000 renovation budget.   I proceeded to get him 3 of everything.  3 architects to choose from, 3 cabinet choices, 3 floor choices and then I brought the narrow downed  options to my Buyer.  I learned a strategic work plan while working on the Sutton Place job.   I would show up every day unannounced. Sometimes 2 or 3 times a day. The contractors would never know when I was coming but I would have tootsie pops in my pocket. If we were on schedule the workers would earn their treat. It ended up becoming part of the fun.  And the treats ultimately expanded to my home-made baked goods.  I also set up the system that no matter what contractor or finishes I got for the Buyer I did not take any kind of referral fee from the contractors.  I wanted to only recommend people I trusted not because I was making some kind of side tip.  Instead, each contractor gave my clients the best price.  The contractors also had me as the ongoing contact so there was no delay in getting answers. In return… they showed up on time because they never knew when I would stop by and frankly my homemade fresh blueberry muffins are worth it!

This one sale multiplied because this happy customer ended up getting married, having a baby and needed to sell and then Buy a larger place. He also referred me to one of my biggest repeat clients.  I started with one and grew my Real Estate business one family at a time. As my real estate business sphere expanded, I began to limit my Buyers to only 8 at a time.  This way I could effectively handle the renovations and showings.

For me it was never about making the most money or even having the highest sales volume. It was about helping people through the transitions in their lives.  I would tell every Buyer the four walls do not define us…it can be 500 square feet or 5,000 square feet $200,000 thousand or $2,000,000 million. I feel if we are inspired at home, it affects everything outside of the four walls.  The memories we create we carry with us wherever we go.

Originally when I got to the company… Many of the other agents did not like the idea I left my job in news broadcasting to become an agent.  But it was probably the best training I could have had to lay the groundwork for Buying and Selling homes.  I spent over a decade of my life meeting people, hearing their stories and then sharing it with the communities they lived in.  It was a gift for people to share slivers of their life stories with me.  As a real estate agent if you listen to the Buyers, their wants and needs you can better connect them to a property.

Three years after I started my Real Estate career in Manhattan, I was elected by my East Side office peers to be on the Agent Council with ownership to help protect and promote agent protocol for the firm.  “Dairy Girl” had found the hole in New York City’s Real Estate market, and I filled it with “Brick & Mortar” and old-fashioned Midwest gumption.

- Mary Beth Waite 

One day the owner of the company Clark Halstead got a call from one of the city’s major developers.  He was struggling with a rent-controlled tenant.  He had an option to build a commercial high rise on a prominent Midtown East 52nd Street corner.  Manhattan had changed the rules about building floor heights on corners to protect the townhouse gardens which sit mid-block citywide.  The city development office thought tall buildings diminish light and create shadows having an impact on the gardens.  The developer, Harry Macklowe was on the verge of losing his demolition permit.  He had all the other tenants out of a group of side by side brownstones except for one woman with 23 cats who possessed a strong attitude against his attorneys.

Harry Macklowe  reached out to Clark Halstead looking for an agent that was good with people to help him find new housing for this  woman so he could build his skyscraper.  Clark suggested “Dairy Girl”.  I was not a heavy production agent, but he told Harry I was good with people and I was the right match.  The next day I was sent down to Harry’s office to meet the development mogul.  I was ushered into a room with the longest conference room table I had ever seen.  Harry entered wearing a custom apricot colored shirt, stylist tie and more gold jewelry than my mother wears. He got a kick out of me trying to find the seams in his Olympic length conference room table. We chatted for a while; I think he was testing my people skills.   Harry told me my midwestern “Gumption” might just be the connection he needed to get the cat lover out.  The next day I got a call and a budget of $325,000 to find a studio for the woman.

Since I knew no Condo building in Manhattan would allow that many cats… I made a strategic move to rent a chauffeured car for our property tour. When I arrived with my picnic basket of baked goods and a few cat treats… I asked the woman to bring one of the cats along with us. I knew whichever one she chose would ultimately be the one to live in the unit. We settled into the back seat as the driver toured us from building to building. Along the way she told me about her life and why moving was so hard for her. The drive time gave me the opportunity to open her up to the idea of moving.

Our last stop was my favorite. The Gotham, a great condo project located at 170 East 87th Street.  The unit had just come on the market. It was the first day of showings. Again…an angel was nearby. The doorman kids were at my boy’s school. He had told me there had been 21 showings so far that day.  He also shared what he had heard the agents saying in the lobby, including some offer prices which had been mentioned.  Since the unit had an alcove, she really liked it.  It was bright with a view, although she did not like the color.   I told her we could have it painted before she moved in.

Harry was paying cash. But to get the unit we were going to have to bid above the listing price. The doorman let me know one of the Buyers had mentioned a purchase price of $340,000 which was over the purchase budget I was given.  I called Harry and told him she loved it but it was over his budget. He needed to increase my budget with -0- contingencies and a quick close. I told him even if we got it at the elevated price the listing agent was wrong and had underpriced the unit.  The condo was worth more than our offer price.  The phone went dead.  I found out a few minutes later from his attorney Harry had thrown the phone across the room. Harry is not used to having people tell him what to do. But cooler heads prevailed, despite 19 offers we ended up getting the unit coming $1,000 more than the top offer. The doorman was correct.   His information secured the deal for us.

Next challenge was finding homes for the 22 other cats, painting the unit and then arranging and helping for the Tenant’s move. The agreement was she could live in the condo rent free for 10 years. This was not a gift. It was a bridge towards her future and Macklowe’s ability to build his high-rise.  Everything moved forward and the Tenant was happily living in her new condo at The Gotham.

Several months later the same size condo unit layout on a lower floor came on for $110,000 more than he paid. I drafted a letter to Harry Macklowe with the info and said “Don’t mess with the Big Dog” .  I was right about the pricing.   He made a lot of money on his investment in just a couple months.  A few days later I got a call from Macklowe’s staff. Harry was converting some of his apartment buildings off 5th Avenue to condos and he wanted me to work with his staff to help suggest the finishes.  It got back to me that they had been told to listen to the “Big Dog”.  Humor is the building block to everything.

I would not have been able to do any of this without the guidance of Clark Halstead, Diane Ramirez and Elizabeth Henry who gave me the tools to find my way at the East Side Halstead office.  They taught “Dairy Girl” how to farm the cement streets of Manhattan.  Not a day goes by where I do not find a way to implement their advice even after all these years.  My real estate career has evolved because of their care.  As they taught me, there are two ways to negotiate.  You can push or pull people.  Pulling people towards their future has been vital for me.

- Mary Beth Waite