Editorial
Front Page - Friday, November 19, 2010
Third-generation Realtor enjoying career more than ever
David Laprad
Karen Riede is a third-generation Realtor who works with her mother, Elwynn Schwartz, at Chattanooga Real Estate Consultants. She also handles sales for her husband’s company, Mountain City Construction.
- David Laprad
Karen Riede didn’t choose a career in real estate; a career in real estate chose her.
Growing up, Riede listened to her mother, Elwynn Schwartz, and grandmother, Bettye Harrison, talk shop every night at the dinner table. Riede learned the ins and outs of the business from their conversations, and by the time she was ready to purchase her first home at the age of 19, she knew far more about the process than the average person.
“I was living in an apartment, and my mom told me a house would be the best investment I could make. If you’re paying $650 for rent, then you can own a house for the same amount of money. And she was right.
“My mortgage actually ended up being less than my rent. Not only that, but I bought the house for $79,000 and then sold it two years later for $100,000. I’d bought the right house at the right time,” she says.
Although growing up under the wings of two of the mavens of Chattanooga real estate had given Riede the know-how to be smart with her money, it hadn’t invested her with a desire to be a Realtor, so she began taking marketing classes at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. She didn’t like the change from a small, intimate learning environment to a school the size of her hometown, though, so her mom suggested she earn a real estate license.
“She told me she could use the help, and that I’d never know when I might need the work. So I came home every weekend for a month and took the classes,” she says.
Although Riede had the coursework under her belt, she still wasn’t interested in selling real estate, so she waited a year to take the test. She passed without spending a single minute reviewing the material.
“My mom couldn’t believe I didn’t study for the test. I’d been around real estate all my life. I was pretty sure I’d pass,” she says.
Riede decided she’d work at Chattanooga Real Estate Consultants, which her mother owns, for a little while and then return to school. But then she started making “good money” selling homes to people she’d met at school and to walk-ins needing help finding a house.
She also got a boost from Peter Van Deusen, who at that time listed a lot of foreclosures. Since he carried 20 to 30 other listings, he didn’t have enough time to manage his foreclosures, so he turned that task over to Riede, as he believed the experienced would be good for her. He was right.
“For a year, all I did was work with buyers I took all the calls, got used to talking with clients and learned how to write contracts. Then some of those buyers started giving me referrals and coming back to me when they were ready to sell. I eventually had enough of my own business coming in that I was able to stop working with Peter,” she says.
Riede, who’s married to Art Johnson, owner of Mountain City Construction, took some time off following the birth of their daughter a few years later. When Riede was ready to return to work, she transferred her license to Bell Development, which offered her an opportunity to sell new homes. The company also provided her with a salary and benefits, which was a huge boon.
The market turned, however, and Bell and Riede parted ways on good terms. Then, in 2008, Riede and her husband opened Mountain City.
“Art didn’t want to build new homes because of the condition of the market, but we really like buying houses and fixing them up, so we decided to renovate and resell houses,” she says.
Mountain City allows Riede to utilize all the expertise she’s acquired throughout her 11 years in real estate. Since she and her husband deal primarily with foreclosures, she’s able to draw on her experience working with Van Deusen to negotiate good deals with banks. And she applies her knowledge of what people are looking for in a new home, which she gained while working with Bell, to the restoration work she and her husband do.
Riede says that while the end of the $8,000 tax credit has made it harder to sell homes, she and her husband are rising to the challenge.
“We’ve been staging the houses on which my husband works so they look more like places where people could live. That has gone a long way toward selling those listings. Last week, we received offers on two homes immediately after we’d added things to them,” she says.
Although Riede ended up in real estate almost by default, and she never returned to school, she’s pleased with her vocation.
“I love it. I don’t know if it’s because I grew up hearing about real estate, but it’s all I think about. Even when I wasn’t actively selling houses, it was still my main interest. When the paper came on Sunday, I’d want to see what was new to the market and go tour the homes. I was interested in how the market was doing and where things were selling,” she says.
Although Riede’s work with her husband consumes a lot of time, she is able to watch football games with her family and attend her 13-year-old stepson’s wrestling matches at Baylor School. She also makes sure at least some of the conversation around the dinner table is about what her children are doing. However, the discussion inevitably swings back to real estate.
“I have to laugh, because our 13-year-old will say, ‘Mom! Dad! Can you please talk about something else? I’m sick of hearing about real estate!’ And I’ll realize he’s listening to the same things I did growing up. We’re always talking about a home inspection, or a closing, or about what we have to get done,” she says.
Time will tell if their discussions will have the same effect on the boy as the conversations Riede heard growing up had on her. Two things are certain, though: 1) by the time Riede’s children are ready to purchase their own homes, they’ll know far more about real estate than the average person; and 2) history does have a way of repeating itself.
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