On the wall of Hammond Residential Real Estate’s Chestnut Hill office – an office that did $701 million in volume last year, by far the most in the state – hangs a framed reprint of the Boston Sunday Globe from Dec. 8, 1991.
The right side of the page is dominated by a photo of Saul Cohen, and the headline “Bucking the Slump: While Hammond Real Estate expands, other Realtors drop out.”
Standing to the right of the reprint, shrugging his shoulders and smiling, Cohen told Banker & Tradesman recently, “We seem to be in the same boat again.”
On March 13, Cohen finalized a deal with Brookfield Residential Property Services, which acquired GMAC Residential Services in September 2008, to buy back all eight of his Hammond Residential GMAC Real Estate offices. Cohen also added four more former Carlson GMAC Real Estate offices in Lexington, Concord, Winchester and Framingham – four well-respected offices and “congruent marketplaces,” according to Cohen.
A New, Old Company
Cohen started Hammond in 1991, and sold the company to GMAC Home Services in 2001.
This go around, Cohen brought in four friends and colleagues to take varying minority ownership stakes in the new, old company. His original partner, Joe Hare, with whom he’s shared a desk since 1991, is aboard again. Donna Scanlon, Hammond’s first employee, senior vice president and administrative manager, is also a part owner. David Stenberg and Jim Nemetz, managers of the Boston and Chestnut Hill offices, respectively, are also part of the new ownership.
“I’ve seen it from the very ground up, before we even opened the office,” said Scanlon. “I’m just very happy to be a standalone company again, back on our own. Being independent again, as we did it for a long time before [the sale to GMAC], we really do like it better that way.
“Saul calls the shots again,” she said. “He can make the decisions solely on his own. He knows the marketplace best here. A corporation isn’t really local real estate, and they don’t understand the marketplace the way he does.”
Cohen said he structured ownership this way for a few reasons.
“Everybody likes to feel like they’re really part of something,” he said. “And they’ve earned it.”
Cohen, who is 77, said he was positioning the company for success when he eventually retires by bringing on owners who are as young as 25 years his junior.
“I wanted them to have a long run ahead of them,” Cohen said.
Why Now?
It’s a buyer’s market in residential real estate. But is it a buyer’s market for residential real estate companies?
Cohen said this deal has been ongoing since about November, when it became clear that Brookfield was interested in selling and making owners franchisees.
“We’re primarily a franchisor in the Canadian market; it’s really the way we prefer to do business,” said David Lacey, managing partner of corporate development at Brookfield Residential Property Services.
Lacey said residential real estate “revolves around a culture of leadership,” and that’s what Hammond has under Cohen.
“You need someone local to execute on that leadership mandate, and Saul is the guy who can do that,” Lacey said. “That’s tough to do from a corporate perspective.”
November 2008 will not be remembered fondly by Realtors; it was one of the worst months on record. But Cohen was ready to buy back Hammond and add to it, despite the black, bloody attitudes that prevailed in the market.
“It isn’t an issue of a good time or a bad time,” said Cohen. “The opportunity presents itself; [if] it works, [then] move forward.”
Brookfield offered a similar deal to Robert Kinlin and Paul Grover on Cape Cod, but instead of reacquiring Kinlin-Grover GMAC, they started Robert Paul Luxury Properties.
Cohen said values in his markets haven’t declined as wildly as others across the state and country. His first step will be to “assimilate and Hammondize” the new offices, and bring online the programs that made Hammond successful in the first place. Volume is down, after all, and that requires some hustle to overcome.
“It’s day-to-day street fighting,” Cohen said. “It’s everything.”
Now that the company is again locally owned, Cohen expects a spike in recruiting of other agents who were turned off by Hammond’s national affiliation with GMAC.
“I think agents are hesitant to become involved in something that they think is not their local market,” Cohen said. “Now we’ll have the ability to talk these people; they all know me anyway.”
But for agents already with the company, very little will change. Cohen will be around more often and available, without as many responsibilities to a central office halfway across the country.
The central office is again on Boylston Street in Chestnut Hill, just like it was in 1991. And just like 1991, Cohen is making moves in a down market.
There are one or two differences that Cohen sees, just from looking at his picture in the Globe.
“I certainly had more hair then,” he said.
