Women Leaders Of Real Estate: Allison Jaffe of Key Real Estate Services On 5 Things You Need To Succeed In The Real Estate Industry

Someone does not have to lose in order for you to win. I sell a lot of run-down houses left in estates that are almost invariably sold to developers and contractors to be flipped for significant profits.

As a part of my series about strong women leaders of the Real Estate industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing (Allison Jaffe).

Allison Jaffe is the Broker of Key Real Estate Services, a two-person brokerage working throughout 11 counties including most of NYC and its suburbs north and east from her base in New Rochelle, NY. She is a Realtor® affiliated with the Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors® for which she has co-chaired the Member Services Committee, served on HGMLS committees, and was selected for the inaugural class of the HGAR Leadership Accelerator Program. She earned the National Association of Realtors’® Graduate, Realtor® Institute (GRI) designation and NAR affiliated designations as a Seniors Real Estate Specialist (SRES®) and a Certified Buyer Representative (CBR®). https://keyrealestateny.com/

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us the “backstory” about what brought you to the Real Estate industry?

I grew up in and around NYC, have a BFA in theatre technology and MFA in theatre management, and eventually got into the not-for-profit, professional theatre community in New Jersey, where I spent the 1990s. As the millennium and middle-age approached, I met and married another not-for-profit arts administrator in NY. Since sharing the not-for-profit life is not sound retirement planning, one of us had to switch careers to make a profit for a while. For several reasons, I made the switch and got my real estate license as a way to combine my entrepreneurial instincts with my interest in architecture, preservation, and re-use.

Can you share with our readers the most interesting or amusing story that occurred to you in your career so far? Can you share the lesson or take away you took out of that story?

Over the past ten years I’ve written an intermittent blog titled You Can’t Make This Stuff Up!, so yes, I have stories to share. My due diligence as the Seller’s Broker on an attached row house in NYC, revealed that the Lot number assigned to my client’s property by the NYC Department of Buildings and Department of Finance were off by one number: #59 vs #60. In addition to being a potential title issue, Lot 59 carried DOB fines totaling $206,000. Turned out, the DOB had inadvertently shifted the lot numbers of six attached row houses in their records decades earlier. While we pursued the house sale, an attorney pursued an official correction in the DOB records that my client’s property was Lot #60 so NYC would not lay claim to $206,000 of my client’s proceeds at closing.

That experience proves the need for due diligence as either a Seller or Buyer Agent for two reasons: 1) Sellers don’t know what they don’t know about their properties. 2) What is important in a property’s history changes over years of ownership. Codes, lending criteria, enforcement, and so much more can change while a homeowner has no need to pay attention.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

I anticipated celebrating Key Real Estate Services’ 15th anniversary in 2020 with some sort of client-appreciation social event. When the pandemic put an end to that plan, I used the milestone for some serious introspection and as a result I’m currently rebranding Key Real Estate Services to double down on my specialty as a Seniors’ Real Estate Specialist representing senior- and estate-owned properties. This particular niche has been a specialty of mine since early on, but it has grown in both volume and importance.

Selling a home that has been in one family for multiple decades is a very different task than when a younger owner sells a property within a decade or so. Usually, the motivation is more urgent, the run-up to that sale is longer, and the stakes are higher because the equity in that home is a large piece of sustaining the owner or the heirs. By lifting an overwhelming burden off my clients, I allow them to focus on the life change that has undoubtedly motivated the sale of that home.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

That focus on senior- and estate-owned properties has been a significant differentiator. In the densely populated northeast market, mass transit and municipal services enable people to age in place, but also, many people retire OUT of the area. So, there is a lot of call for such a specialized real estate Broker to work on those transitions.

I worked with the Power of Attorney for an 87-year-old, widow who could not return to her multi-story suburban home after a stint in rehab. The POA and I brought in the resources to clear the house of nearly 40 years of personal property and papers before selling the house. Meanwhile, the owner moved permanently to an assisted living residence on the strength of my BPO (Broker Price Opinion) projecting the proceeds of the sale that would pay for her apartment and care well into the future. As the Seller was physically frail but of sound mind, I asked the Buyer and attorneys — who in the pre-COVID NYC metro area would attend a standard in-person closing — to conduct the closing at her assisted living residence to afford the Seller the dignity of participating in the sale that would end that chapter in her life. They did it; three middle-aged guys who are typically all business, giving total deference to the tiny octogenarian at the table as she put her signature on the closing documents. It’s that balance of assertive professional representation and empathy that distinguishes Key Real Estate Services.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

My first Broker invited me to join his small office in the Bronx neighborhood where he lived and worked and where houses were largely owned by low-income, multi-generational families in which Spanish was the dominant language. I was a white girl from the middle-class suburbs who had a little high school Spanish. So, I asked my Broker if the homeowners in the area would trust me. He told me if I treat people with respect, that’s what they’ll give back to me. I knew that, my parents taught me that, and he saw that in me. But I needed to be reminded to just be me in this new context.

Working in a melting pot like NYC, I’ve worked with lots of Buyers and Sellers with whom I had little in common. Well after becoming a Broker myself, I was the Sellers’ Agent for a mixed-use property in the Bronx where the deceased owners had lived in the second-floor apartment for more than 50 years during which they rented to a series of commercial tenants in the ground-floor retail space. When the heirs went into contract with an unrepresented Buyer who wanted to relocate her local business to the storefront, we gave the current month-to-month tenant the requisite notice to vacate and he refused to go. The Sellers feared that the Buyer would walk away, but I didn’t think so. With direct access to the Buyer, I had learned that she was a Vietnamese immigrant who fled as a teenage refugee, endured two years in a refugee camp while learning English and qualifying for entry to the US where she wound up in the Bronx, built a life and a business, and saved to buy a building for her business after years of paying commercial rent. I didn’t expect that an obstructionist tenant would deter her from that goal. I was right. The parties agreed to a price reduction to compensate the Buyer for the eviction process that was finalized six months after the closing. The buyer thanked me for understanding her and helping her realize her goal while representing my client’s interests.

Ok. Thank you for all that. Let’s now jump to the main core of our interview. The Real Estate industry, like the Veterinarian, Nursing and Public Relations fields, is a women dominated industry. Yet despite this, less than 20 percent of senior positions in Real Estate companies are held by women. In your opinion or experience, what do you think is the cause of this imbalance?

Men were there first. The patriarchal hierarchy was established when the first Europeans came to North America and few men who have benefited from that power structure through the centuries have willingly relinquished or even shared the benefits of it with women or any other “other” for that matter. Sure, that status quo changed a lot through the 20th Century, and I expect it will change more and faster through the 21st Century, but history tells us that the more vulnerable someone’s position of power and privilege becomes, the tighter their grip gets.

What 3 things can be done by a)individuals b)companies and/or c) society to support greater gender balance going forward?

Reward merit, appreciate diversity, and understand that change is opportunity. If we live that way as individuals and work that way in companies large and small, we’ll be a stronger, better society.

In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by women executives that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?

I’ve observed that men are lauded for moving through a succession of positions and departments in a company or chasing opportunities from one company to another and maybe even back again. “Atta boys” at every move. But women who follow that pattern are suspected of not being serious, not being committed, being disloyal (to the men who “gave them a chance”), having competing “priorities” — any number of negative responses intended to discourage resume building and advancement.

Another version of that is the disingenuous compliment intended to discourage career moves. A woman who proves good at what she does and has an opportunity to move up is often told she is “needed” where she is or she’s a role model. The message is, ‘don’t go’.

Can you share 3 things that most excite you about the Real Estate industry?

• There are so many ways to define personal success and achieve it. Think of all the business models — variations on the theme of real estate brokerage — that are out there.
• An individual person can be multiple types of real estate professional and pursue multiple income streams simultaneously — careful always to avoid conflicts of interest. I’m a Buyer and Seller Broker, a serial renovator/flipper, and taking my financial success from those efforts, a fledgling investor in RIETs.
• Real Estate is cyclical and endlessly resilient. While the down cycles are hard it will turn back up. If you can leverage the run-ups to cushion the inevitable downturns, you can ride them out. If you can shift your business to accommodate a specific down market you can even succeed in adversity.

Can you share 3 things that most concern you about the industry? If you had the ability to implement 3 ways to reform or improve the industry, what would you suggest?

1. Information is not knowledge. With so much information instantly available about real estate on a macro and micro level, consumers AND too many licensees make that mistake. Suggestion: Find a way to distinguish advertising from data; something similar to print ads for medications that are marked “ADVERTISEMENT”.
2. The post-crash resurrection of low- and no-down payment loans. Sure, it can work for some people, but I am skeptical of pitches about lifting low-income families up on the economic ladder through homeownership while ignoring high DTIs and other vulnerabilities of individual borrowers. Suggestion: Teach financial literacy in middle school and high school.
3. I see a paradox in state legislatures and courts making supposedly anti-trust decisions purporting to protect competition with the practical outcome of feeding the 800-pound gorillas in the room. Numerous such actions result in huge real estate interests gobbling up smaller entities the way banks have merged over the past 20 years, growing “too big to fail.” These actions also allow business practices that obstruct fair trade for small real estate companies. Suggestion: Reverse the Citizens United decision and prevent corporations from funding political campaigns.

What advice would you give to other leaders to help their team to thrive?

Save the competitive spirit for client negotiations. Instead of competing with other brokerages and agents, provide the best product and/or service you can and measure your success against your own goals, not compared to other offices, teams, or agents.

Ok, here is the main question of our interview. You are a “Real Estate Insider”. If you had to advise someone about 5 non intuitive things one should know to succeed in the Real Estate industry, what would you say? Can you please give a story or an example for each?

1. Real Estate is no longer necessarily local. With all of the information and data published online, Buyers know where they want to live. A suburban homeowner across the Hudson River and in another county from my single office, asked why I should represent her townhouse instead of a local Broker that was then listing multiple other units in her large condo complex. I explained what I said earlier about people knowing where they want to buy and that both brokers will use the same online tools to publish and promote her listing, but there is a difference that might be meaningful to her. The broker selling multiple units like hers concurrently has an equal obligation to sell each of those listings, so they don’t care in what order that happens. My entire focus in this townhouse community would be on selling only one unit, her unit. I still have one office in a suburban city just north of NYC and I make that same case to potential sellers throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and six suburban counties.
2. Someone does not have to lose in order for you to win. I sell a lot of run-down houses left in estates that are almost invariably sold to developers and contractors to be flipped for significant profits. One developer came to see a house that was full of debris and signed a contract to purchase it as-is; the debris was still there for the final walkthrough. At the closing table, the Buyer extorted a $5,000 credit for the extra cost of removing the debris from the house because the Buyer’s attorney had not deleted boilerplate contract language that the house will be delivered “broom clean”. That’s ‘gotcha’ behavior. Don’t be that person.
3. Asking for less is the fastest way to get more. In markets where starting low and negotiating up is the convention, this is not counter- intuitive, but in NY, it is perceived as dangerous. When I listed a vacant estate property late in one year, it was worn but habitable until a frozen pipe burst in the attic and rained water for hours. Four floors of living space had to be gutted to dry it out before we could resume showings. When I advised the six heirs to re-list the house at a seemingly low asking price — even for that condition — one challenged me that if I didn’t have a buyer at the significantly higher contract price I had projected by a certain date, he’d use the insurance money to renovate and flip it himself. 72 hours and 31 showings after it hit the MLS, we had 17 offers and sold it above my projection.
4. Exclusive Agency opens more doors. In the NYC metro market, Exclusive Buyer Agency is still disparaged by the vast majority of Brokers, agents, and buyers. But in truth, having the commitment of Exclusive Agency with my Buyer Clients gives them more choices. When a Buyer Client wants to see a FSBO (For Sale By Owner), the invariably wary Seller is quick to declare that they are not paying me any commission. I get us in the door by telling the Seller that my client will pay my commission. Every time we start that way, the Seller comes down in price when they know it’s true.
5. Spend a little to get a lot. I was the Listing Agent for a hard-to-sell suburban house that proved to also be over-assessed. I advised my client to start a property tax grievance to reduce the taxes as one of the few cost-effective improvements we could make. The projected $1,900 cost of the grievance process could be passed onto the Buyer. Our eventual Buyer refused to pay the $1,900 or split it; the Seller also refused to pay or split the expense. They each chose to walk away from the $310,000 sale over a $950 closing expense. A week later I realized the biggest fool in this scenario was me; I should have paid the $1,900 as a deductible business expense in order to collect my $12,400 commission. Several months later, the Sellers listed the house with another Broker, spent at least $5,000 on improvements, and a year after that, sold the house for $29,000 less than the $310,000 sale they could have had. I’ve never made that mistake again.

Because of your position, you are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the greatest amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I would advance the concept of “Equal Opportunity Capitalism”. Equality and Capitalism should not be mutually exclusive ideologies; they should serve each other. EOC would debunk the left’s false description of tax-funded services and resources as “free” and stop the right from branding every civic resource and safety-net program as “socialism”.

Under EOC every individual pays the same percent of their annual income to pay for a common set of civic resources and programs designed to ensure basic infrastructure (hard and soft), education, health care, and safety from which individuals can grow and prosper to their greatest potential. I don’t know what that tax rate is or if it fluctuates. But whether you earn $27,000, $270,000, $27-million or $27-billion that year, your tax rate is the same percent of your annual income, period. Businesses are taxed similarly, proportionately. If you have the smarts, talent, skill, or just effort to rise above the baseline, you are entitled to profit from that and pay privately for something different or better after you pay your proportionate share to support the human-capital baseline. But the guiding principle of Equal Opportunity Capitalism is to create a self-perpetuating means to raise the standard of living and decrease inequity across the population.

How can our readers follow you online?

keyrealestateny.com right now. I admit to following rather than leading when it comes to having an online presence. But I am currently working with a new team of marketing professionals to establish a social media presence that can indeed be followed.

Thank you for your time, and your excellent insights!