Real estate agents' focus shifts to how clients live

Real-estate agents once specialized in representing homes in particular neighborhoods.

But increasingly those who specialize are sidestepping the map and building businesses structured around their clients' lifestyles or demographic traits.

Want to buy or sell a "green" home? Look for an "EcoBroker," an agent trained to understand energy-efficient, environmentally sensitive construction and how to navigate a buyer through the market for homes featuring green traits.

Interested in downsizing or finding a home for the golden years? Seek out a senior real-estate specialist — there are roughly 100 in Washington state — who helps clients over 55.

Want to flaunt your success? Get a luxury-home specialist.

Want to run away? Dial up a resort and second-home property specialist (RSPS).

Fretting about having to get your home set up correctly to sell? Seek out an agent certified in staging.

Agents are specializing in every lifestyle and need — and, in doing so, they often get certificate degrees known as "designations" that add acronyms to their titles.

But not all agents who specialize have completed an institute's designation training. Many agents who cater to a particular niche have created their own specialties and educated themselves on their corner of the marketplace.

Thirteen agents at 360 Modern, a consortium of real-estate agents affiliated with various brokerages around Seattle, make it their mission to represent midcentury modern as well as contemporary modern property, a specialty for which there is no designation — yet.

They sell everything from affordable midcentury homes in Southeast Seattle to contemporary penthouses in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Other agents who have earned a designation put their own twist on their credentials.

Julie Mattson and Heidi Davalos, agents for John L. Scott Real Estate in Monroe, have specialized in selling luxury properties on acreage, but they also market equestrian properties.

Among their recent listings were a 39-acre Duvall property with an airstrip and a 21-acre farm in Arlington with a 54-stall horse barn and indoor-equestrian arena for $1.95 million.

Rebecca Haas, an agent with RE/MAX Metro Realty in Seattle, is a senior real-estate specialist, but she also specializes in the purchase and sale of investment properties.

She says the two specialties work hand-in-hand since middle-age and senior buyers not only spend time debating where to make a primary home but also consider buying investment real estate to diversify a retirement portfolio.

Certified or not, the list of agent specialties goes on and on, including specialists for condos, tech expertise, land transactions and more.

Defining designations

Nationally, the number of designations available to agents has risen from 13 to 21 since 1996, according to The National Association of Realtors.

A poll this year by the Seattle-King County Association of Realtors found that these were the most popular designations for local real-estate agents: 39 percent are an accredited buyer representative (ABR), 28 percent a certified residential specialist and 28 percent an accredited staging professional (ASP).

The association's chief executive, Russ Hokanson, says that some designations were initially unique — such as the accredited buyers' representative that emerged when buyers wanted to make sure they were getting an agent who worked only for them, not the seller. Eventually, however, some specialties such as this one become ubiquitous.

Why specialize?

Agents who have aligned their real-estate practices around a particular type of clientele say they want to differentiate themselves in a competitive marketplace where most everyone already knows a real-estate agent and where sellers and buyers increasingly have options to cut costs, such as working with discount and limited-service agents.

The specialized agents also say they're more fulfilled personally because it makes the job more about offering a "lifestyle" service and less about the industry's mercenary side. Often a specialty relates to an agent's personal interests or peer group.

"The interesting thing about specializing is that you end up aligning yourself with a group of people who have a certain approach to life," says Robin Rothwell, an EcoBroker at Home Realty's Green Lake office. "It's more interesting doing this than being just bottom-line oriented."

Rothwell, who practices what he preaches since he drives a three-wheeled electric car, works with clients seeking homes that have environmentally friendly features or could be remodeled to bring in energy-saving or other green features.

Some clients have allergies and chemical sensitivities, he says. Others consider buying a green home as a way to curb their carbon footprint.

Haas, the senior specialist, said she chose her specialty for personal as well as practical reasons. Not only did she see first-hand how vulnerable an aging grandparent was during a move, she also said that when she entered real estate four years ago she had a large network of boomer-age contacts from more than a decade of work in the software industry.

"I'm not a senior myself, but I thought it'd be good for me as a 30-something to learn the right communication style and expectations (in this community)," she said. "It's a very large demographic of the real-estate universe."

A needed spark

Richard Corff, an agent with Coldwell Banker Danforth's Bellevue/Redmond office who works with 360 Modern, said he hit a point in his career several years ago where he needed to bring more passion into his work to keep himself engaged. As a fan of architecture and sustainable living, he began focusing his business on modern architecture.

When he's not with clients, he's doing what he enjoys — flipping through architecture magazine Arcade Journal, attending a sustainable-building conference, or spending time with the local branch of DoCoMoMo — a midcentury modern-preservation group.

"What we're really talking about here is lifestyle marketing," he says.

Of course, not all agents who specialize get to spend all of their time working with their area of expertise.

Rothwell, the EcoBroker, says that only 2 percent of the inventory nationally could be classified as green, but that the National Association of Home Builders has stated 10 percent of all homes nationally will have green traits by 2010.

He said less than 30 percent of his transactions fit into the green category, because often he's helping clients find homes that aren't "green" now, but could be viable green-remodel candidates.

"I'm working now with people who want to live a greener life," he says. "In Seattle there's a perceived prestige in green right now."

Haas said that transactions among senior clientele account for no more than 25 percent of her business.

Corff, the modern specialist, says that about 30 percent of the inventory in the Puget Sound area accounts as "modern" — defined as tract homes as well as architect-designed homes built from the 1940s to the early 1970s.

He said homebuyers interested in modern homes are a diverse crowd, but the homes often appeal to technology workers who prefer the clean lines of the homes' design or to equity-rich people moving from California where such homes are more common.

Corff says that with increased availability of property information available to consumers, agents must specialize or risk becoming "commodity agents."

But he also says that superficial specialties may emerge so agents can lay claim to having a unique angle.

Haas, however, says she thinks there can't be enough designations and specialization within real estate.

"The barriers of entry to get into this industry are too low," she says, noting that designations are, if nothing else, proof of higher education in the field. "You can get into alphabet soup with these designations. But it's not a bad thing."