Realtor guru revs crowd

Marty Rodriguez, a four-time Century 21 national real estate sales champion, wants all players in the real estate game to forget about the numbers.

Rodriguez, whose brokerage business is based in Glendora, hammered this message home to a rapt crowd of about 150 local real estate agents Thursday at a charity breakfast in Glendale.

California home sales are down 24% from last year, and in most Glendale area codes the median single-family home price is down from last year, according to DataQuick, a La Jolla-based research firm. But Rodriguez insists that times are good for brokers.

“Analysis is paralysis,” she said. “I’ve been through the good, the bad and the ugly. And I’m good at ugly.”

With the bravado of a touring public speaker, Rodriguez recounted what some deem a mythic rise to success during the tumultuous Southern California market downturn in the early 1990s.

“Her claim to fame is she rose up when the market started tanking,” said event co-sponsor Ernest Tepman, a co-founder of La Cañada Flintridge-based mortgage company the OCD Group. “She’s truly a legend in the industry.”

A tireless work ethic — engrained in Rodriguez during her childhood when she shared a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house with her parents and 10 siblings — is what propelled her through a slow market, she said.

Though the current market does not mirror the early 1990s recession, recent reports of slumping sales and increased foreclosures have recently cast a gloomy shadow over some sellers, buyers and brokers, Rodriguez said.

Mohammed Ehsan, a broker with California Prudential Real Estate who entered the business only a month ago, said one of his first challenges has been finding buyers. Too many people are waiting for prices to plummet, he said.

And Glendale buyers may have reason to wait.

Prices in the northern hillside areas of the city took a downturn in June, according to DataQuick.

The median price among six single-family homes sold west of the Glendale (2) Freeway, east of Brand Boulevard and south of Verdugo Park was $1.01 million, down 27% from the same time last year, according to DataQuick.

Among the 21 homes sold in the area north of Verdugo Park, which includes the neighborhood surrounding the Oakmont Country Club, the median price slipped 9.5% to $741,000.

Northeast Glendale, which includes Scholl Canyon, was the only area where the median price increased in June. Among 12 homes sold, the median price was up 30% to $1.05 million, according to DataQuick.

Rodriguez conceded that buyers may be fewer now than they were two or three years ago — when the Southern California market, backed by a glut of sub-prime lending opportunities, went into overdrive — but opportunities have far from disappeared, she said. Brokers just have to work harder to find a deal, she said.

“I don’t care about the market,” she said. “Buyers are still going to buy and sellers are still going to sell. I just have to find it before you do.”

Beating the competition can be as simple as working long nights at an organized desk in squeaky clean attire and rehearsing new sales pitches every day, she said.

“The only difference between now and a few years ago is that now you have to have skills … especially in the market we just came out of,” Rodriguez said. “People weren’t looking for an agent, they were looking for a real estate prostitute.”

Salma Basravi, a Glendale-based broker for Keller Williams Realty, said there’s no cause for alarm — for buyers, sellers or brokers.

“People still have to buy,” Basravi said. “It’s just like food. You got to eat.”