Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: Welcome back to Real Estate and more. Our next guest this morning is not just an ordinary person. I don't mean he's a Martian or anything. Nothing like that. Actually, the opposite. A great guy. There are a few of us in this world that have this wonderful ability to motivate others and encourage others into being the best that they can be. Oftentimes without that person even knowing that they been touched with his positive influence. I have been aware of this gentleman's remarkable talents of encouraging others and motivating others for more than four decades. And I confess my professional real estate career has benefited in a big way by his influence and extensive knowledge. He is broker owner of prestigious Remax Accord with ten offices throughout the East Bay, as well as he having to look over 450 agents under its umbrella. He does this with his wonderful wife and his family members. And I have to tell you, he's a great friend of mine. Let us have a warm welcome for Mr. Jerry Stadler. So how is it motivating and supervising 450 agents plus staff?
[00:01:10] Speaker A: It's a daunting endeavor, for sure. I could not possibly do it alone. That's the way it was at the beginning.
My wife, Stephanie, was my partner, founder of Remax Accord.
She was a top, top agent in this area for many, many years.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: There you go again, doing that. Motivation and encouraging, just like you've always did to land a pretty girl and to actually tell you what to do. Isn't that a wonderful thing in life?
[00:01:46] Speaker A: It is. We have a long history that we might get into at some point here today, but anyway. And then later on in our careers, Stephanie and I welcomed our two sons. We have three sons. One of them got into the financial world and is doing quite well. The other two, my youngest, Todd, my oldest, Mike, joined us several years ago, multiple years ago. And that really made the difference.
Michael and Tod are both incredibly intelligent and progressive. And they were thinking and doing things that I had never heard of before. So I became the listener.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: Jerry, As a big motivator, encourager of all of these people, including your family, what do you feel is your best personal asset? What do you do the best?
[00:02:43] Speaker A: I am a communicator on all different levels.
I enjoy vicariously helping an agent close a deal because I become part of it. And I get my gratification. That way of knowing that I had something to do with the success of that and to see the smile and the love on the agent's face and the thank yous and knowing that I helped the family was an incredible feeling. For me, it drives me.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: It's part of your DNA. I recognized that so many years ago. It's just part of your DNA. And those are the type of people I like to have around me. I like people that work with others and make them the best that they can be. And, man, you do it so well. Do you love real estate, Jerry?
[00:03:33] Speaker A: You know I love real estate. I've been doing this for 35 plus years.
I think I'd be crazy if I told you I didn't. Of course I do.
I enjoy helping people. I enjoy talking with people, the conversations. I can be a very sophisticated, real estate minded conversationalist, or we can just do small talk on the front porch. When you say, do you love it? There are moments when you don't. But I can tell you five negatives. One great thing happening to you will wipe out all the negatives.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: Where did you originally come from? Did you come from the East Coast? West Coast? Where did you grow up? What is a little bit about you and how did you get these wonderful traits to help others and care about others? Where did you grow up?
[00:04:27] Speaker A: Okay. I grew up in Fresno, California. I'm a California native. I moved up to this area in 1960. That's because my parents did, and I moved with them. I spent my last year in high school here in Danville. That's where I met my bride, Stephanie, for the first time.
I can't say that I was trained to do what I do or how people react to me or how I react to them. It's just there.
I talk to people, and I always treat people the way I want to be treated and respected, and it goes a long ways in a conversaTion. People can feel that I think in me, that if I'm talking to a client, they're number one. Absolutely number one.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: I totally agree. Now, didn't you have a real great story? Didn't you know your wife in high school, and then you both parted ways throughout life? You went elsewhere, and then after so many years, you came back and said, hey, tell me that story briefly.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: Oh, boy, I could write a book on this one. I've told this story a thousand times. Yes, I dated my wife in high school. I saw her for the first time walking in between classes, and the minute I saw her, I knew it. Didn't even have to talk to her. The look on her face, the smile, the way she was maneuvering all by herself through a bunch of people just. Absolutely just captivated me. So we arranged to go out. The unfortunate part, at that point in our life was that her mother didn't like me.
I was a senior, she was a junior. And I think she didn't want her daughter to be serious about anybody. But unfortunately, Stephanie felt about me the way I felt about her. So it blossomed, but then collapsed. Being a young age, I ended up joining the military, went away for a while, came back, married another lady.
She had two stepdaughters that I helped raise for about seven, eight years. And then that fell apart. At that time, I decided to write Stephanie a letter because I had heard that she had gone through a separation or potential divorce. And I thought, well, I'll just say hello. My intentions were totally good. Just wanted to see her and talk to her. We arranged to have lunch at the old Dan McGrew's, which is the building just was torn down at that. Lunch was going just great. We were having a great conversation until she looked at me and said, and this is like, on, I think, a Monday. And she said, I'm getting married next Saturday.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: This is where the story gets good.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: It was a big shock. I mean, not that I had a lot of plans at the time, but it dealt a huge blow to my brain as to where I thought we could take this. So, anyway, if those of you know baskeTball, I talked a lot to her about this upcoming marriage. I realized fairly quickly that she was marrying for the wrong reasons, and it was just a survival mode for her single mom with three sons. So for the basketball fans, I put the full court press on her and talked her out of getting married. Well, she actually made the decision, but she knew how I felt about it. So she did not marry this gentleman. And that was in probably October, November, and June 30, the following year, we were married.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: Unbelievable.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: Yeah. It's a great story. I tell you. And every day, every single minute, I thank God for that.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: Absolutely.
That's precisely how I feel with mine, too. Well, getting back to real estate a little know this can't be a love romance program, but Jerry can make it sound like that. I warned you that he's a motivator and encourager. Many times in the life of an airline pilot, if you are smart, things happen. There's so many things happen.
You're 8 miles high. You're 8 miles a minute. You're pressurized. You're in a hostile environment up there. You go to your buddies and say, hey, did you ever have that happen? Or what do you think about this equipment? So you actually confer with others of knowledge? Many times in real estate, I've went to Jerry and say, yeah, hey, Jerry, what do you think about this situation before it became a problem? And many times he's been there and said, well, you know, I think I would go this direction with, know, it's your deal, it's your client, but I think I would go this direction with it to keep everything going in the direction it should be. And so many times I felt, wow, that was a really good deal. It's like I'm back in the airline business of some more than 20 years ago, and I share and grateful for that. What do you think, Jerry, are the most successful traits of a great agent, an agent that does well for himself as well as for clients? The best traits.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: First of all, you have to have passion.
You have to want to do this. You have to love what you're doing, because that's the only way that you're ever going to be great at it. If you don't love it, try something else.
The next thing that coincides with that to make you successful is your work ethics.
Are you willing to roll up your sleeves and go to work? It's a big job, and you have to be prepared and do it. Not talk about it, but do it. And then the last thing is your training.
You have to be trained. You have to know that when you're a real estate agent, you are wearing two hats. One is a real estate agent. You know real estate, you know what's going on and how to structure the deal and so forth. But the part about that that a lot of agents don't get is they are salesmen also.
And that's what we do. We sell, help people buy houses. We help people sell houses. So that's the important part of what you do.
If you work all three of those into a successful career and truly love it, nobody can stop you. You are.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: You know, one of the things that I found has been so helpful is that Remax Accord is one of the largest franchises of Remax in the nation.
They have done so well with pushing along the Remax brand. But I have to tell you, Remax is the largest large brokerage in the world, something like 140 some offices in that many countries. There's over 140, 50,000 agents in all other countries. If you go to other countries, like I used to as an international pilot years ago, you will see Remax brand everywhere. So having that resource for training is incredibly valuable. And your son Michael is really good at getting it to the agents and getting the new training there. He helps with the databases that each agent needs to have and the training that they received, because when you get your license, you're really not likely to know all that much. So you need that training to develop your ability to make money. And I have to say, Remax Accord, Remax International, Remax domestic, it's all been a wonderful experience. I guess we've been hanging out with you, Nancy and I, for about, what, ten years or so? Yeah, but.
[00:12:52] Speaker A: Greatest ten years we've ever.
[00:12:53] Speaker B: OH, it's been wonderful. Sometimes I really love to tease. And my granddaughter asked me the other day, she says, what does the term tease mean? And I said, well, there's a lot of depth in that. But what I mean is that I've known Jerry for over 40 years. And back in the day, when I was laid off from the airline, I had a string of supermarkets and one of those stores I had bought from Safeway stores. And Jerry, before his real estate days, was an actual supervisor of Meat Cutters for Safeway stores. So when I bought this store up shows Jerry to show my butchers how to operate the cases and talk about this particular store. And then after retiring from the airline and after a period of time of needing something else to do, there was no question where I was going to work. It was going to be Remax Accord working with Jerry. And I have to tell you, it's been a wonderful experience. So you have been working, Jerry, with your family all of these years. What is the secret sauce that you use to actually work with your family? Obviously, your bride and you get along very well in order to be successful. But now you've got your youngsters in there, and I have to tell you, it's the good way that they do it. It's not where. Okay, well, he's that way. He's going to beat you up because he's one of the sons. I've never seen that here. I've just seen a lot of support for the agents, new and experienced. So what is the secret sauce of working together with your family?
[00:14:30] Speaker A: My brother, each one of us brings something to the table that's very, very important and critical to what we do. Now, I'll tell you a cute saying that I had with my wife, Stephanie, is that she's a very independent, very smart, very aggressive, lives to complete her list, wants to be number one no matter what she does.
So if she had an aggressive personality that I didn't have, I was more the good old boy. Like I said, I could do small talk with anybody.
[00:15:06] Speaker B: Sing it, too.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
I said to myself, I don't want to make the mistake of trying to control this beautiful woman.
But I do believe I need to contain her.
Now, that's kind of funny. But she welcomed it. She says, you got to help me. I'm going this direction. I don't know what I'm doing.
In her personality. That didn't matter. Just go. Jump in all four and go. But I thought some direction from me, some assistance, some input from me would make the difference. So we're kind of like a Jekyll and Hyde. We both have our ways of doing things. But at the end of the day, we always agree. It's just how you get there. Truthfully. And I don't know if this is good or bad.
She's totally a black and white person. I am Gray.
That's why I'm a good problem solver. I believe is that I agree. You come at me with problems and I start thinking, okay, how can we fix this? How can we solve it? And I always know there's more than one way. Just like there's more than one side of a transaction. There's always two sides. There could be three, could be four. So I'm always looking for that. Enter my son's Mike had his own business, software business. He did estimating for construction. Very intelligent, knows software that was a component that absolutely did not have. And then Tod, he's got a giving heart. He's very, very good.
I've told him. And all my sons are incredible. And I've got eight grandchildren. They've all done a marvelous job. But I'm watching Todd, and I've said to myself many times, you know, I wish Todd was my dad.
He's got that personality. Not all the time, but he's got that personality that I can really bond with.
And now he's become a manager and a salesman also. And he's doing quite well.
[00:17:24] Speaker B: Oh, he's doing great. You know, interesting, in real estate, people don't realize it. But because you have an agent license. Doesn't mean that you can just go out and sell real estate. You have to, quote, hang your license, end quote. Under a designated broker, that takes all the responsibility. So in other words, the designated broker is the one that you're going to work for. Like it or not.
I'm a broker myself. I'm an associate broker. We still work under the remax, Jerry and Stephanie Remax Accord designated brokerage. Jerry does a wonderful job at this designated broker. So a lot of people didn't really understand that. But you just don't get a new license and go out there and begin selling real estate, you have to have a lot of training. And that training takes sometimes several years to get there. Which in turn, I have to tell you that 80% of our business comes from business we've already done before. It's people that say, hey, you care about me first. Yeah, you got to put food on the table. But we come back to you because we trust you, we believe in you. And that is one of the great encouragers and motivations of Mr. Jerry Stadler here. And I'm really appreciative of that. I'm not trying to embellish too much. I'm just saying that it's true. So I would say Mr. Stadler has a heart. And when I say that, literally he has a heart.
I saw in their backyard that they had captured and grabbed one of the hearts that they had on Danville Boulevard. They had actually purchased that heart, which is about five or 6ft tall, and had put it in their backyard as a reminder that this whole business is about heart and about your clients. And they have it here at Remax Accord. What do you say about know, I remember you got it, you put it back there and a couple of those little mirrors fell off. And it seems like a couple old boys were loading it in the back of a truck to go get it fixed. Who would that be?
[00:19:28] Speaker A: That would be my buddy Michael.
Well, the full story is this.
I own two hearts.
And Danville had this beautiful artistic show where they auctioned off these hearts. I think there are ten or eleven of them total. Two of them my Stephanie and I absolutely fell in love with. One of them was not for sale. City of Danville confiscated it, said, this will not go to auction. We're keeping this. It now sits in front of the theater in Danville on Front Street. And so then there was another one over on Railroad Avenue on display. And that was when Michael referred to as being mirrored. And that one simply caught my eye because you look at it and then as the day progressed, or the wind kicked in or you walk by, it gave you a different view. Now, the real meaning of the story was that these were all auctioned off. And we had no idea what they were going to sell for. We figured they were going to be auctioned off at a fairly expensive price. And so here comes the containment part. Now Stephanie says, I want at least one of those hearts. And so she looked up the artists, found out that one of them was in Danville and the other one lived in Oakland, but operated out of a place over in Berkeley, I think it is, Michael helped me go get it.
Was it Berkeley, Michael? I can't. Whatever. But anyway, we contracted with the artist to make our own.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: In your opinion, Jerry, do you see a slowdown coming at all in the real estate market? A lot of people have been talking about that since the beginning of the year. But I don't know. What are your thoughts?
[00:21:24] Speaker A: Okay.
When I say the market is market, and I do buy into that statement, but the thought behind it is this.
There's a saying out there said, god, give me the grace and the knowledge to change what I can and forget about the rest of it. Changing the market is not something we can do. All we can do is react to it. Now, for the tenure that Stephanie and I have been in this business, we have seen these types of ups and downs come and go. We're used to them. We've seen them. Will it last forever? Absolutely not. There's talk now coming out of it by some point next year.
The saying is that they need interest rates to drop a little bit. Let me tell you about human beings that I have garnered over the years. Number one, they are incredibly forgiving. You can burn them. You can do a lot of different things to them. But if you stand in the way of what they want, they will get over it.
They have a great memory of things that happened, such as two and a half percent interest rates. But they also forget fairly quickly.
Okay. When I got into this business, INterest rates as an average was 8% to 10%. Stephanie was in a market. I was there trying to sell property. When the market interest rates were 17, 18%.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: My first house, twelve and a half percent.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: It was ugly. But you know what? We figured out how to do it. So that's the message. Find your market. Understand how it's working, what's driving it. Forget about where it's going, and deal with it right now.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Experienced agent will really help you with that. There's a lot of different ways, as it looks daunting, a lot of ways that an experienced agent will help you to acquire that home. I was listening the other day. Dave Ramsey came out, and he said, whatever you do, buy your home now. He said, don't wait. He's talking on a national basis. He's not talking about, necessarily, the San Francisco Bay Area, but the San Francisco Bay Area, to put it as one feisty lady that we used to have come and deliver seminars, she would say, get here, get in, and make money while you sleep. And through appreciation. And that is one of the big things in the Bay Area that most of the other locales does not have, it has appreciation. So the difference between paying 4%, which is extremely low mortgage interest rate, or paying 6% or even 7%, get in while you can. Because with the housing inventory being as tight as it is, I can only see it going up for you, Jerry. But it's an opinion of both of us. It's just an opinion.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: It's just simply economics. We have supply and demand. Right now, the sellers are not supplying. And then right now, the buyer's demand is over the top. They want to buy something. And if they are anything like me, they're going to buy. Nothing stops me from buying something that I want. If I can't afford it, I'll figure out, I'll get financing, I'll do something, but I want it, and I'm going to buy it. And I think most Americans or human beings are like that.
I've seen markets where they've just dictated a slowdown. And when that opened up and things got back to normal, they came out of the woodwork because now was the time. Now I'm going to get to do what I wanted to do.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: The herd.
[00:25:11] Speaker A: Yeah. And the herd mentality is very true out there.
[00:25:16] Speaker B: That's a very good advice. I think that people need to really check back in with your experienced agents. They will tell you what's happening. And don't go with all of the media that you read, because all you're going to do is end up confusing yourself. Go to an experienced agent that you trust or one that you've used in the past, or you can call us, know, the Michael Hatfield Remax team, and we'll give you the straight skinny on what we see and where we should think about concentrating your efforts. But today I have to tell you again, the Mr. Motivator, Mr. Encourager, any real estate agent that isn't working for Remax Accord should give it some really serious thought. I've had a wonderful time this morning being with Jerry, talking about our Bay Area. Well, mostly about the human factors. And this program is real estate and more. Today was a lot of more, and I sure enjoyed it. And a special thanks to Remax Accord and all of the family. If you're an agent and you would like to reach out to Jerry, telephone him at 925-8384 100. That's 925-8384 100. You might want to hang your agent license with Remax Accord just like Nancy and I have. You've been listening to real estate and more on KGO the spread. I'm Michael Hatfield, your host. Tune in next Saturday morning where we can once again talk about the real estate market and more. Have a wonderful, wonderful week.
[00:26:45] Speaker C: The views and opinions expressed are based on current economic and market conditions and are subject to change. Information on the show provided for illustrator purposes only and does not constitute professional or legal advice. Information from sources deemed reliable but accuracy and completeness not guaranteed. Michael Hatfield and the Michael Hatfield Remax team have no liability for information discussed on the show. Consult with qualified professionals prior to taking action.
[00:27:14] Speaker D: We at the Michael Hatfield Remax team enjoy representing our valued clients. If you or someone you know is interested in buying or selling and wishes to schedule a complimentary appointment with the Michael Hatfield Remax team, call us at 925-32-2775 that's 925-32-2775 or go to our website, michaelhatfieldhomes.com.
[00:27:37] Speaker B: I'm Michael Hatfield. Thank you for listening today. Join us next Saturday at 09:00 a.m. For the next real estate and more when we again sharpen our focus on house the market.
[00:27:48] Speaker D: Join us next Saturday morning at nine and have a wonderful week. Best wishes and blessings to you. You 01493.
