Innovative Realtor Herbert Hawkins Dies

Herbert Hawkins, who built a small Temple City office into one of the top five real estate brokerage firms in Los Angeles County, died Wednesday at his Newport Beach home. He was 76 and had waged a yearlong battle against pancreatic cancer.

A native of Paducah, Ky., Hawkins entered the real estate business in 1946 amid high postwar demand for new housing. His firm grew in part because of innovative advertising and marketing and a decision in the late 1950s to keep his sales force working seven days a week.

He began to open branch offices years before major franchise chains started to transform the local real estate industry in the 1970s. At his retirement in 1980, he had 120 offices and 4,000 employees throughout California. The firm was sold in 1994 to Prudential Realty.

“He was the first volume broker” in the San Gabriel Valley, said Jane Caughey, a longtime competitor.

“He had branches, [was open] seven days a week, employed big numbers of people and did a lot of advertising. Everything was on a grander scale,” she said.

Hawkins’ firm got so big, Caughey recalled, that other real estate agents jokingly asked, “Where is the real Herbert Hawkins?”

Hawkins was also one of the region’s first real estate businessmen to offer escrow and mortgage services. In the mid-1960s, he was among the first to sell houses to minorities in Pasadena and other San Gabriel Valley communities, alienating some clients and fellow agents.

Hawkins attended the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and Columbia University in New York. He served as a naval officer aboard the Denebola during World War II.

Sensing the business opportunities out West, he convinced his mother to move to California with him after the war. Together they entered the real estate business.

He started Herbert Hawkins Realtors in a small storefront at Rosemead Boulevard and Longden Avenue in Temple City. On the opposite corner, he built a self-service gas station and darted back and forth between the two, depending on where the customers were.

He found greater success with the real estate company, soon adding an office in Arcadia, then Pasadena and Alhambra. Eventually, he had franchises and company-owned offices in Fresno, San Diego, the San Fernando Valley and in Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange counties.

In the late 1950s, Hawkins decided to compile all his listings in a full-page ad in The Times, believing that it would have more impact than breaking up the listings by city, which was the usual practice. The tactic succeeded in raising his company’s profile. So did his decision in 1958 to have his sales force work seven days a week. The expanded service raised some eyebrows among competitors but eventually became the norm.

“It revved everybody up,” Caughey said.

A deeply religious man, Hawkins was an active lay leader at several Southland churches and served 20 years on the board of World Vision.

His religious beliefs informed many of his business practices, such as his willingness in the mid-’60s to sell property to qualified minority clients in white neighborhoods where they had historically been shut out.

“He took a lot of flak for that,” said son Preston, an Arcadia attorney. “People canceled their listings. They said, ‘You’re the company that put a black family in our neighborhood.’ But he said everybody has got the right to own a home.”

Hawkins traveled the state as a speaker for the California Assn. of Realtors and was president of the West San Gabriel Valley Board of Realtors.

He is survived by his wife of 49 years, Betty; his son; daughter Janet; sister Lucy Pouliot, and five grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held Aug. 28 at 11 a.m. at St. James Episcopal Church in Newport Beach. Donations may be sent to the St. James Memorial Fund.