Members make the difference in the real estate profession
MAR wants to know more about its members. If you know of a REALTOR® who’s done something special, has a great idea or insight about the Michigan real estate industry, or is just perfect for some publicity, we want to hear about him or her. Call Joe Kras, communications specialist, at 517.334.5535 or e-mail him at mar@mirealtors.com.

With over 30 years of experience, Nanci J. Rands is no stranger to real estate. Being introduced to realty as a child, Rands has made it a kind of family business. “My father was a mechanical engineer and building designer, and when I was a little girl in Chicago I had seen all the buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. On weekends, dad would take me to construction sites, so I grew up thinking that little girls were not only supposed to know buildings, but were also expected to read and understand building plans.”

Little did she realize that as Associate Broker and principal at Snyder, Kinney, Bennett, & Keating (SKBK), she would later find herself using those early lessons to her clients’ best advantage, taking the opportunity to market a number of “architecturally significant” properties.

Getting into real estate when her daughter was only six years old, Rands was originally intent on law school, but to her, “three more years of school seemed like an eternity; the real estate license course was comparatively short.” Now, in addition to Rands’ own success, her daughter continues
the “tradition” as a very accomplished REALTOR® in her own right.

But realty has not only enriched Rands’ family’s life, but that of her customers as well. “My philosophy is that REALTORS® don’t just find houses, they find homes”; she takes particular delight in finding Metropolitan area homes for newcomers from overseas. “For most people, the amount of land we have is substantially different from where most of them have come from, particularly those people that have come from Western Europe where the population density is
much higher.” But land isn’t the only offering her customers take pleasure in; Rands emphasizes the culture of the Metropolitan area, too. “I once had transferees from Sweden touring the grounds of the Cranbrook Institute and the campus’s Carl Milles sculptures. They certainly knew his work — Milles being from Stockholm — but he had created all these fabulous sculptures as artist in residence at Cranbrook, so these people had only seen the copies in Stockholm — they were experiencing the originals for the first time.”

Aside from real estate, she enjoys golf, cooking, and event planning for her friends and many community and charitable endeavors. She has also been known to take long weekends to almost anyplace that Northwest flies non-stop, including Amsterdam, London, Paris, or Rome. “Luckily, I sleep like a baby on airplanes!” Her advice to young REALTORS® is “to get organized. Since we are in a business that demands selfmotivation, realistic scheduling — and a commitment to that schedule — determine the hours that you will work, and be prepared to have your schedule challenged by a ready, willing, and able buyer or seller.”

A real estate veteran of over 50 years, Harry Griffith credits his continued success with his warmth and duty to the customer. “As far as sales, as far as your duties to the buyer or seller, it’s always been about accommodating them, getting them what they bargained for; when I list a piece of property I want to be there at every showing” Before entering real estate, Griffith was a mathematician in the Air Force, “and [I] found out that certainly wasn’t where I belonged.” Upon returning to Michigan, he had planned to study engineering, but ultimately ended up switching to business school. His father-in-law, a REALTOR®, invited him to sell some real estate, “and I loved it.” Taking his Master’s degree at the business school at Michigan State, “I was supposedly the first person to get a Master’s with a major in real estate.”

Entering real estate in 1954, Griffith was quickly amused to find a few generation gaps between his own emerging career and that of his venerable father-in-law’s. “His ads always ended with the remark: ‘house furnished; lights and bath.’ And I always got a kick out of it; I told him, ‘Dad, I think it’s time to change things around a bit; people kind of expect those now.’”

Likewise, Griffith quickly noticed that he was considerably younger than most other REALTORS®. “Young people didn’t go into real estate back then because you couldn’t make a living from it — it took about six months to break even.” And noted the different mode of operation between brokers back then. “When I started there was very much of a competitiveness, but also a warmth between offices; we didn’t co-op much between offices.

Now I hear that almost seventy percent of deals are coops, while back then ten percent was unique. We listed it and we sold it.” Reflecting on the changes he’s seen in the customers
over the years, Griffith observes that education and electronics have made buyers much better informed than when he first began, particularly in their knowledge of the market, prices, locations, and especially finance. But for all the technological and informative changes, the customers still respond to warmth and honesty.

“Be a warm person and be yourself, but have a smile; people want to be friends and they want to be friends with you; they want to be confident, and seriously, not a façade, but genuinely friendly and helpful, not someone who has memorized a sales pitch.”

Mark Piper’s initial introduction to real estate was property management — while growing up, he spent most summers mowing lawns or as an assistant maintenance person at an apartment
complex. Working with his father at the family brokerage offices in Flint during college, Piper then left to work as a lending officer at Silicon Valley Bank in California. After moving back to
Michigan, he decided to pursue a career in real estate.

Since his move, nine years ago, he’s taken up both running and golf and enjoys both sports for the same two reasons: “It’s simple to gauge your improvements or lack thereof, and they are both social sports — unfortunately, my golf game has remained relatively static over the past few years; however I have seen some improvement in my running!”

When asked about one of his more memorable sales, he recalls, “I was representing the purchaser in a transaction that involved assembling several parcels of land for a large commercial user. We got to within ten days of closing: The purchaser had received site plan approval, bids, etc., and one of the sellers decided they wanted out. Everyone threatened lawsuits; it was very unpleasant. Eventually the deal did close but not without a great deal of stress to all involved.”

His best advice to new REALTORS® is “Don’t speculate. If you do not know the answer to a question posed by a buyer/seller, tell them that you do not know, and you would be happy to look
into it. You are viewed as an expert in real estate, not law, engineering, architecture, roofing, or city administration.”