John Ranco started working at Gibson Sotheby’s International Real Estate on Tremont Street in Boston’s South End in 1996. His own T-shirt and gift retail business, Only in America, fell on hard times when the big name stores started to come back into the malls where he had rented good store fronts cheap.
“That business went bust,” Ranco laughed. “I tripped, took a bad spill, got back up on my two feet after a couple years. I still had the Portland, Maine store going, but I needed something else.”
He came back to Boston, where he had served as a buyer and merchandise manager for Boston University. A friend suggested real estate, and Ranco gave it a try.
“It was like a whole new world to me,” Ranco said. “I met a whole crew of sales people, we were kind of all alike, and we were having a blast. I ended up loving it.”
In 1998 he sold his business and went into real estate full time. In 2000, he joined the Greater Boston Association of Realtors; in 2002, he became a director. This year, he’s the president of the Greater Boston Association of Realtors, and is a senior broker associate at the same Tremont Street office in the South End.
John Ranco
Age: 47
Experience: 13 Years
Company: Gibson Sotheby’s International Real Estate Boston
So you’ve seen this place transform.
More like explode. From tumbling down and burnt out buildings to [luxury condo building] Atelier.
It must be crazy to see it like it is now.
It was a very close-knit community at that time. There was burgeoning renaissance happening, and it was really done by a lot of young professionals coming in and buying up buildings and condos and converting the South End. It was very diverse and exciting, and young, and the whole arts community is here, and restaurants and small shops, and people just loved it. Everyone knew each other, and people would say hello to you.
As you were watching the place explode, did you get to a point where you said ‘I just can’t believe this is what things are selling for’?
The two-bedroom [condos] that we used to sell for $125,000, or the record-breaking prices of $149,000, that are now $650,000 – it’s pretty amazing. Or just the mere fact that the South End having a doorman building: a full service doorman building at the Boston Center for the Arts. We never would have thought that. The old National Theatre used to be on that site, which was a falling down old building – just a derelict building – in real bad condition with an unsafe underground garage parking lot under there. It’s been pretty neat to see all that change.
How has this area fared since 2008?
It even goes back a little bit. We started feeling a slowdown in demand in August 2005. Volume was always remaining about even until last year, except when we had spikes in sales from the various projects being built around the South End. In September 2008, with the banking crisis, we saw an immediate drop in sales in the South End – about 40 percent in volume. With that came people not listing their properties because of the volume dropoff, and the news and the financial crisis.
What is the strategy to retain some momentum from this fall into the Spring ’09 market?
Surprisingly, one of the things that’s been driving business is that prices are a little more negotiable, interest rates are very low, and this [first-time homebuyers] tax credit has been there which is particularly effective for certain incomes, and then under $500,000 properties. Next year … you know, we don’t have a lot of mid-priced properties being constructed right now. We have a very constrained inventory level, contrary to what we hear nationally. Our market, in July, I think it hit a low of a three-month supply of housing. A good problem is that the lower inventories will probably hold prices in check rather than a lot of price drops. But the other problem is that having housing is so critical to the city’s overall health. Building zero [housing] for a long time isn’t a good thing either.
We’ve all gotten into thinking about the market in terms of dollars, and do I sell now or later, and I don’t want to lose my value. But we have to remember that it’s housing, and with housing your dealing with lives, and people can only hold off for so long from job changes, getting married and needing a bigger space, having children and moving out of the city, or moving back to the city after the kids are gone. These are all life circumstances that are sort of building behind the scenes here, and people are holding off, holding off, and holding off, and there comes a point where you just have to make your move. Not having enough inventory next year could really be the problem. The upper price points – that will probably have its challenges. That specialty mortgage market really needs some attention.
John Ranco’s five favorite recent hikes:
1.) Mt. Washington, N.H. – It’s the tallest mountain in New England.
2.) Katadin, Maine – It’s the toughest hike I’ve ever done. You literally look down 3,000 feet as your climbing down.
3.) Monadnock, N.H. – It’s the second most climbed mountain in the world; we just did it few weeks ago to stretch our legs.
4.) Kersage, N.H. – It’s always fun. It’s the mountain I grew up hiking.
5.) The Sequoias, Calif. – We hiked it in February, and we ended up in a lodge above the snowline with 12 feet of snow all around us. It was a blast.
