Friendly Persuasion
As one of the city’s most successful agents of high-end house and condo sales, Janet Owen knows the art of the real-estate deal.
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Still, several agents I talked to in the spring happily reported multiple offers-meaning buyers are bidding more actively for homes. It's evidence of a favorite mantra of Owen (and other local agents): unlike the seesaw East and West coasts, Chicago has no wild swings. "I don't have anybody who's lost money," she says. By the same token, it's tricky to speculate and expect big profits. In new construction, for instance, the hot area is east of Michigan Avenue and north of Grant Park. But Owen is not alone in cautioning buyers not to jump the gun, especially if they plan to flip a condo for a much higher price. With so much new construction there will likely be liquidity issues-meaning that buyers might opt for new homes instead of a condo resale.
If you are still tempted to become an agent, Owen has a few tips. Listen to a client. Have a long sit-down to determine what the client wants. Otherwise you're wasting everyone's time. Don't start with a wildly high price in the vague hope that a buyer will go for it. No buyer will, not in this market. Then you drop the price and the property is tarnished and stays on the market too long. Nor is it nice-or smart!-to garner business by promising a seller that you will sell the house at a price the market cannot support.
People buy the house-not the broker.
Be wary of idly tossing out a price; it's what's called "anchoring," and a prospective buyer or seller will never forget it.
Always be willing to negotiate, even a little. If you're showing a house, don't let the client go crazy with an extravagant rehab. The mechanicals are more important-a new furnace, a good roof. A little money on closets won't hurt. "I'm amazed what they're building. There are closets with islands," says Owen, who admits that she has a lot of clothes. Keep an eye on the kids. Owen just sold a house on Arlington Place. The deal was sealed when all three children jumped into the Jacuzzi and squealed. "Bathrooms have become the new family room," she says.
It's important to weed out the oglers. Christie Hefner, the chairman and chief executive officer of Playboy Enterprises, had a fabulous duplex on Scott Street that she wanted to sell. There was a rooftop garden and a quaint winding stair. "The place was big, but it obviously wasn't right for a family with kids," says Hefner. "It was tricky to sell, but Janet showed it off to its best advantage. Somehow she kept away the curiosity seekers who imagined all sorts of pictures up on the walls."
Did the house sell for what Hefner wanted? "Not quite," she says, smiling, her fingers an inch apart. "But very, very close."
Owen also represents buyers. She does it loyally, with great acumen, but she is the first to admit that "the approach is very different." A listings agent, representing sellers, excels at details, at management-placing ads, running the Web site, scheduling open houses, tracking bids. A buyer's agent merely hunts. She is not the queen of her domain. Her enthusiasms are tempered by a client's reaction. She has got to be quick on her feet. She cannot merely extol the antique English fireplaces and Peacock millwork. Often, in fact, she cannot extol anything. "As a buyer's agent, mostly I stand around quietly," she told me as we waited for a buying client at a high-rise on North Dearborn Street.
The client, middle-aged and widowed, is planning to decamp from a Gold Coast condo with too many memories. She is looking for a new home for less than a million. Owen has a list of properties to see that will take the better part of an afternoon, starting with 1440 North State Parkway, a seventies high-rise called The Brownstone. As we await the elevator in the lobby, Owen talks up The Brownstone's reputation, its great service, the convenient garage-people love it. That's when the door opens to reveal all four sides of the elevator covered in protective burlap.
"Oh, isn't that nice!" Owen exclaims, and then instantly recovers. "You see, it's a small building, and the owners didn't want to take up extra space with a freight elevator. This building is very intimate."
Upstairs, Owen does anything but stand around quietly. She does a better sales job than the curiously silent building agent. A prosaic west-facing window is "what we call sunset views." Low ceilings in the bedroom? Look at the closets, the floor. "Isn't it grand? It's as big as a living room!"
The client is underwhelmed. Another high-rise down the street is only slightly more promising. We proceed to the third location, where the listings agent has yet to appear. Owen, irked, tries tracking her down on her cell phone. She gets the keys from the doorman, even as she raises an appalled eyebrow. "This is something I never do-leave keys!"
We proceed upstairs. The apartment is a duplex, with a killer terrace over the building's garage. There is a terrific new kitchen. A plasma TV the size of the Cubs scoreboard above the fireplace. A burbling fountain on the terrace. The apartment is going for $780,000. It has been on the market for nine days. Owen herself seems impressed: "Isn't it special!" But the client is not opening her checkbook. Mostly she is worried that a terrace leak will ruin the garage roof, and she will end up paying.
Outside, Owen hails a cab. "This is the shortest ride you'll ever have," she tells the driver, directing him two blocks east to 1212 North Lake Shore Drive.
It is here that I begin to discern a scheme in the afternoon's viewing. "A little over your price range," Owen admits of the $1.125-million condo on the 34th floor. "But I thought I'd show you what's out there."
We started low and bland. We moved into more interesting territory. Now Owen delivers the knockout punch. Two giant ceramic Great Danes greet our entry. There are Greek columns in the hall. Wild fabrics cover the dining room chairs. A full-length forties photograph of the owner as a stunning fashion model dominates one wall. The woman is very big in interior design, offers Owen, and the client is hooked. Of course it is out of her price range. For now.
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And that's OK. The unspoken agenda here is to get the client comfortable enough to put her own condo up for sale. Owen, of course, will do the exclusive honors. She's already got a Tuesday open house circled on her calendar.
Agent open houses are the events staged by sellers in which other agents, mostly buyers' agents, come by to check out a property en masse. By industry consensus, they are always on Tuesdays. Thus, not long after the Brownstone tour, Owen is camped out in the widow's condo, a unique duplex on West Eugenie Street listed for $669,000. Admit-tedly, the price tag is well below Owen's usual floor. But in a soft market for multimillion-dollar homes, Owen is willing to take on a high-six-figure property. And, as the owner's buying agent, she will get a piece of that commission.
The Eugenie Street condo comes with a front patio and garage parking-literally out the back door-plus pool amenities. Every-thing is new but the hall bath. "It's good to save something for the buyer to do," says Owen in the condo's kitchen, where several platters of catered salads and chicken kebabs await on granite countertops. Owen, incidentally, claims to have been the first to serve food at an open house. "Now they all do," she says cheerfully. If lunch isn't a sufficient draw, she has a fistful of $25 gift certificates to Bistrot Zinc. She is in a spirited mood today. She just sold a fabulous condo on West Fullerton Parkway.
She is dressed this morning in a striking outfit that she spotted on a 21-year-old colleague at the Sudler gala. "Would you mind if I bought the same dress?" she dutifully asked before heading for Neiman Marcus.
"Don't you look snazzy!" says the first
woman in the door. "You're so nice and thin!"
"It's the suit," says Owen, pleased.
"You always look thin. Have you lost weight?"
"Maybe a few pounds. You look beautiful. As always."
Owen doesn't want me to get the wrong impression. These open houses are fun, but they are 5 percent of what she does. She was up until midnight last night doing paperwork. Same the night before. She does own up to having lost weight-though not the way she would want. She had an allergic reaction after eating a shrimp salad at a neighborhood restaurant and almost died. Since then she has been "paranoid" about what she eats. No shellfish. No bread, pasta, or rice; she's on the "white diet."
The brokers troop in; they tour, they have lunch, they poke through closets, they ooh and ah. Owen gives each a Bistrot Zinc certificate and the same upbeat tips: "Did you see the granite fireplace? It's almost like marble!" and "Don't miss the gorgeous floors upstairs-they're mosaic!"
Suddenly, in walks Victoria Jones, the agent for Linda the lawyer, who was considering 1924 Dayton. Linda loved the house, Jones reports. It's the construction that's giving her second thoughts. Now she is thinking of building. But Jones, meanwhile, is interested in this Eugenie Street condo-for herself!
At 1:30, Owen closes up shop. It was a good turnout; the salad is almost gone. She got a great lead on a client looking for a three-bedroom. Another broker taught her how to pull up the Multiple Listing Service inventory on her BlackBerry-and she heard about someone who might be interested in 1924 Dayton.
Out on the street, I ask why the family that built that fabulous house is selling so soon. Owen hesitates, then drops her voice: "They got hooked on the suburbs. The kids probably rolled around in someone's grass." Owen, of course, never tells potential buyers why an owner is selling. "It's none of their business. Besides, then they think, ‘Hmm, maybe we should move to the suburbs.'"
Owen herself wouldn't think of it. She works in the city. She and Rodger have never owned a second home, not even a cottage in Michigan. All that cooking. The commuting. Who has time? She checks her watch. She glances toward Wells Street. Then she shoots up her hand for a taxi.
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