Jean Crandell, Ann Arbor AreaBoard of REALTORS®

I would like to give hope to new REALTORS®,  or those who do not have a big sphere of influence — I grew up in London, and people who went to school in Michigan and grew up in Michigan would always tell me that it was friends of friends who gave them contacts,and that’s how they got started, and I thought, ‘Haha! Don’t have that!’” says Jean Crandell, a REALTOR® of nearly 10 years.

Setting up in Ann Arbor, “I found I was without a sphere of influence,” so, after working as a REALTOR’S® assistant for a year, she started hosting open houses, making a sale in only her second week. From there she listed the buyer’s house, listing the subsequent buyer’s house, and within her second month she had already made four sales. Her advice? “It’s really all the things parents told you: Be kind, be friendly, be honest, and follow up and people will work with you. So how did I build my business? Every single person I met, I made sure I remembered them; and I’m not a shy person, so in the grocery line I gave cards to the person in front of me and behind me — one time in a stairwell at my daughter’s school, I crossed paths with someone, I don’t even know what I said, but I gave her my card, and she called me!” 

Over the summer, Jean finally made a sale she had been working on almost since she became a REALTOR®: “I met the couple at my daughter’s school at an ice-cream social, and I kept in touch with them. They’ve since become friends of my husband and I, and this summer, they purchased a house in Southfield; it was out of my area, but for friends, I’d go that distance.”

“I wanted to let people know that someone who has no real sphere of influence can make it in this business.” 

Jean will serve as a Director for the Ann Arbor Board of REALTORS® until 2007.

Thomas Youngblood, RE/MAX in the Pointes

When I started, all I got was a phone and a desk and a lot of ‘Atta boy; go get ‘em!’”  That was 40 years ago, when Thomas Youngblood chose real estate instead of dental school.  “A friend of mine and I both went into the business at the same time when we were 19. It was the late ’60s, and there were a lot of commercial opportunities with franchises coming in; I thought I was going to make a zillion dollars right away...it didn’t quite work out that way, but it seemed like that at the time.” Nevertheless,by the time he graduated college, Thomas already had his own firm. 

Having lived within five miles of the same area all his life, Youngblood cites his motivations as sailing and his clients, “I’m dealing right now with a number of clients who are third-generation, so again, being at it so very long and being organized enough to have databases and contact points helps.” 

His most recent project is the development of a high end condominium, “It’s been a long road, but we’re probably going to get a shovel in the ground by the end of the year or early next year. It’s only a twelve-unit complex, but we have deposits for half of them already.” 

He notes that perhaps the biggest change he’s seen in real estate over the years has been in organizational tools, cooperative efforts, and training, but there’s still no substitute for good people-skills and personal integrity, “It’s things like that that carry us further.”

Tom enjoys Michigan outdoor sports. He skis in Northern Michigan and races sailboats on the Great Lakes. This year, he competed in his 25th Port Huron to Mackinac Yacht Race.