Bill Janovitz0
Bill Janovitz
Title: Vice President, William Raveis Real Estate, Lexington
Age: 49
Experience: 14 years
After graduating from UMass Amherst, Bill Janovitz spent the ’90s touring and recording with Buffalo Tom. He and his wife, Laura, bought a home in Lexington in 1997 and after their first child was born, he started selling real estate there. Janovitz and his business partner John Tse now specialize in the modernist communities in and around Lexington. When he’s not selling houses, Janovitz still plays and records with Buffalo Tom and other bands, has written two books about The Rolling Stones, and maintains a website, aptly called “Part-time Man of Rock.”
Q: How did you go from being a full-time rock musician to becoming a real estate agent?
A: It was always in the back of my mind. I’ve always been very pragmatic – even as a rock ’n’ roll musician. I used to think, “Where is this thing going?” So I wondered, “Am I going to be 55 and still trying to make a living on the road?”
Then a lot of things conspired. We were having kids and we just decided to take a hiatus from the tour-record-tour cycle. I tried to launch a solo career, but that wasn’t going to pay the bills. Then, when my daughter was 2 years old, in 2001, I was doing a tour. It was right after 9/11, everything was a bummer. I remember being in New York at a friend’s apartment and I decided to go get my real estate license. Two weeks later I was standing in the office of DeWolfe real estate office wondering how I was going to make it work.
Q: How did your music career prepare you for the real estate business?
A: When I was on a tour, something like 1 to 2 percent of the day – if that – was spent performing and the rest of the day was getting to the gig, going to record stores, meeting reps, shaking hands, going on radio shows. It’s like kissing babies and trying to sell, like running a business.
We had business managers, we had agents, but we were also independent. We learned a lot of skills and business stuff, but most importantly, it was feast or famine, so once you get used to that lifestyle, you’re something of a hustler. If you’re not a born hustler, you develop into hustling. You have a life where you get paid in lump sums and you know (or learn) how to have the discipline to pay yourself a stipend over time. All those skills were invaluable. We also learned to use technology to promote the band back then as well. Marketing and self-promotion is a big part of it.
Q: Did you have trouble getting people to take you seriously at first?
A: Yes, a little bit. It was more about my youth back then. I was in my mid-30s and I was by far the youngest person I knew in the business in Lexington. I got a lot of passive-aggression from some of the other agents when I started out. Or they were just territorial, like I was just another person trying to take away their market share. That’s just the way the business is, but after you’ve been in it for a while, you realize there’s plenty to go around. After a while it’s the top agents dealing with the top agents and you have cordial relationships with everyone and it’s all cool. It’s just a friendly, gritted-teeth business in a lot of ways.
Q: Do you still meet Buffalo Tom fans in the course of your work?
A: Yeah, it’s funny. Some people have definitely sought me out because of that, but it’s more often the case that it’s coincidental. Like casual fans who make the connection to the music while we’re working together. It’s cool, but it can be awkward for me now. I don’t try to promote that. I try to keep them parallel. I don’t mind if they overlap, but it’s not something I try to force.
Back when we started, my manager told me, “You’ve got to use any angle you can to differentiate yourself,” but it’s hard to be artful about something like that.
I don’t want people to hire me because of this other thing I did; I want them to hire me because they think I’m going to do a great job for them.
Janovitz’s Top 5 Boston-Area Examples Of Modernist Homes:
- Six Moon Hill, Lexington
- Snake Hill, Belmont
- The Hoover House, Lincoln
- The Gropius House, Lincoln
- Peacock Farm, Lexington
