Realtors Should Stop Selling Houses…

by Brian Brady

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

…and start making memories.

Realtors are the gatekeepers of memories. They unlock the potential of participatory drama. They insert the would be homeowner into a chapter of a history book. They beg the buyer to paint the blank canvas in unique colors. Realtors are the stewards of the time-honored American tradition, the “do-over”.

IF…they do it correctly.

I was reading one of my favorite webloggers, Geno Petro from Chicago, tonight. Geno and I grew up in Philly. He grew up in the original suburban housing tract, Levittown and I grew up in the Jersey rendition, Cherry Hill. I’m the product of immigrants’ kids who got out of their ethnic “neighborhoods” and made it to the holy ground; the suburb.

Cherry Hill was great place to live in the 70s because it was the ultimate social experiment. Kids of all colors, creeds, religions, and ethnicities mixed together in a damned good public school system. We celebrated bar mitzvahs and first communions, ate pasta with gravy, danced the polka, and listened to Motown, Disco, and eventually hip-hop music. I call it the ultimate social experiment because you had these kids running around, learning tolerance and cultural respect, amid the conflict of the generational prejudices of our parents and grandparents. The enlightened ones were our parents. They bucked the clannish “trust nobody unlike you” mantras of the ethnic ghettoes in hopes of a better life for their offspring.

Cherry Hill was a white-collar town with blue-collar thoughts. The parents were lawyers, engineers, salespeople, skilled tradespeople, doctors, and middle managers at the RCA plant. They were mostly educated because their parents insisted, through broken English, that “an education was the ticket to the American Dream”. The blue collar roots came from our grandparents. They taught us how to curse in Italian, wax poetically like Joyce, and dance to Marvin Gaye, all while sprinkling in the Yiddish word or two.

THAT is what I remember about Cherry Hill, not the 4 bedroom, 2 bath Colonial on Orchid Lane.

Consider this post about a five-year old biker and his father, “Things You Don’t Forget” by Geno Petro:

A young boy, maybe four or five years old, clad in helmet, elbow pads, knee pads, safety gloves, goggles and protective mouthpiece—patient 30-something father to his side with hand on shoulder–came weaving toward us on his virgin bicycle flight– sans training wheels. Again, last time I looked, his mother was pregnant–with him. We both watched on.

I thought back 45 years to my own inaugural two wheeled mission, my own father’s hand on my shoulder, with Salem in mouth and hint of Mennens aftershave lingering in the August air, guiding me with patience (yeah right) along. I think I was barefoot with no shirt in swimming trunks. It was my fifth birthday. Thinking back as I looked down at my attentive companion, that was many dogs ago.

What hasn’t changed and what my point here really is—is…its ‘five years and you’re out’ when you live in the city. The next steps for this young family down the block (mom is pregnant again) and I’m sure they already know some of this, is the For Sale By Owner sign on the black iron fence, followed in short order by the sign of my Brokerage most likely, then off to Lake Forest or Wilmette or some other bucolic Northern Chicago suburb for the next 15 or 20 years in a series of Center-Entry Colonials, before venturing back for the final city swing until finally, permanent retirement in a deep Southern state.

Neighborhoods don’t have character, they have Characters. Weave these Characters into the stories you tell when you talk about your market. Characters are what entice us. They make the memories your customer’s children will cherish .

Connect the sights, sounds, and smells of the present with a story from your market and you will have inspired the reticent homebuyer’s imagination. Characters call out and beg the buyer to join them in the comedy of life, unfolding on the stage (your market), from a seat in the front row (the house).

Stop selling houses and start making memories.