Catalyst for change in the residential brokerage community.

In a notoriously competitive real estate industry whose professionals are rarely like-minded on any subject, there is a remarkably high degree of consensus on one. That subject is Barbara Fox, president of Fox Residential Group, an upscale, boutique residential firm marking its 10th anniversary this year. A quick scan of her resume reveals clues as to why: the eye is immediately drawn to a long list of industry activities under Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY).

This monolithic block on the first page of her CV consists of some 15 appointments in all, everything from the keystone position "Founding Member, Residential Brokerage Committee," to the highly indicative "19941999, Board of Governors," to pillar-of-the-community positions such as "1986-Present, committee member, task force groups to redraft Code of Ethics, restructure Residential Committee, negotiate with Department of State on pending legislation, redraft industry forms, Deal of the Year Gala, etc."

Peter R. Marra, president of William B. May and current chairman of REBNY's Committee on Ethics, said of Fox "I think she's the best. We were co-chairs of Interfirm. She's highly intelligent, terrific, energetic. No individual broker has done so much, put so much time into serving on the committees that make things happen."

Frederick Peters, president of Ashforth Warburg Associates, in his introductory remarks on Fox when he was presenting her with the REBNY's Henry Foster Award, which honors the recipient's outstanding record of achievement, "She is friendly, warm, generous, hard-working and highly principled. She is also smart, articulate and forthright, a colleague who can be counted on for wise and direct counsel on any topic. Her work for the Real Estate Board has been tireless; no one has given the time and energy to industry issues that she has."

Indeed, it is hard to find an industry area where Barbara Fox has not made a significant contribution, or helped spearhead initiatives and changes that improved the way the industry runs, relates within itself, and maintains professional standards, thereby considerably enhancing its image both within the community and from the outside. In a written statement, Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, said "At REBNY, Barbara Fox has served on every active committee in the Residential Division, including its Board of Directors and as a Governor of the Real Estate Board. Whether helping formulate the Code of Ethics and Resolutions of the Division that guide agents' procedures and behavior, participating in the campaign for industry unity, pride and professionalism that has driven the Residential Division's membership to over 1700; making our Annual Autumn Gala a grand evening that has raised over three-quarters of a million dollars for city charitable organizations, or aiding brokers in managing the inevitable market and technological transitions that affect the business, Barbara Fox has distinguished herself as a colleague and as a New Yorker."

In fact, one registers Barbara Fox's various appointments on chairs, committees and group initiatives, as well as her teaching activities (continuing education for agents), and wonders how she ever found the time to be a real estate broker. For example, she helped introduce more relevant continuing education courses for residential brokers. Notes Fox, "Courses did not address any issues we needed to learn about - they were far more directed at commercial brokers. So REBNY lobbied the state to have continuing education more useful to residential brokers."

The time and effort she has spent in service to the community belies her success at marketing and selling residential real estate, and heading up a firm of accomplished agents. Yet she has still had the time to be exceptionally successful in her trade, selling at the very highest level of the residential market. Her success in this arena has happened despite the relatively small size of her firm, which is currently at 25 agents and 4 support staff. Usually, unless you are from a mega-brokerage, you don't land multimillion dollar exclusives consistently. Barbara Fox, however, does.

Barbara Fox is no stranger to challenges and working against the odds. She entered the business in the 70's, when, as she recalls, "You couldn't give away New York real estate." For the majority of rookie agents, this wouldn't exactly be the ideal time to start. Following a solid seven-year stint at Whitbread Nolan, Inc., she transitioned to Stribling & Associates, Ltd. in 1980, where she served as a vice president until 1982. Following that, she spent the next six years, until 1988, at Cross & Brown, where she recreated Cross & Brown Residentials. Previously, the firm had primarily concentrated on commercial transactions. Fox grew the new division from its initial four brokers to over 60 at the time of her departure from that firm. Then in 1989, at a time most rational people would say was a contrarian act of courage (an understatement, given the market's tailspin), she started Fox Residential Group.

Again, she beat the odds, nurtured a company, and won awards and citings, such as two in Crain's New York Business, which put the stature of her firm far higher than its boutique size would suggest,

By about her last two years at Cross & Brown, Fox started to see the nature of the Manhattan real estate business changing, and consequently anticipated the need for more cooperation between residential firms. So in 1986, she and a small handful of other brokers started to invite the heads of residential firms to meet. Diane Ramirez, president of the Halstead Property-Company, explains "Barbara Fox is looked on as a very ethical leader within the community. She has really been there from the very beginning. She's been the backbone and voice of sanity in the brokerage community."

The need for this "sanity" goes back to a couple of decades ago, when the Manhattan residential market was evolving from one of "open" listings to the "exclusive" marketing of properties for sale. This change called for a revolution in the way brokerage firms now cooperate with each other, despite the obvious competition between firms. An inside term came about for this: "Interfirm."

Halstead's Ramirez explains that years ago, competing brokerage firms didn't realize that they could be stronger working together as a group. "Barbara was a catalyst for the whole industry to work openly as a group," Ramirez says. "Because of interfirm, which she catalyzed, manager can now call up manager and resolve a crisis. Consequently, we are able to keep all of our people working on the same page."

This is a significant advance over the days when disagreements were more likely to be resolved in a courtroom. Ramirez observes, "Our end goals are all the same, we are all looking for the same results, and yet as competitors, we didn't realize that we are stronger working together."

Barbara Fox remembers those heady days of ferment within the industry. "There was no interaction among the heads of companies, and very little interaction even among the rank and file agents. It was one of those things where nobody paid any attention to the other people unless they ran into them head on." Then the idea of a committee came up. Recalls Fox, "The heads of all the major firms were really gung-ho to get it going, and the first meeting was really fabulouS. I ran it and the response was awesome. We couldn't believe that everybody was feeling the same way we were."

At this time, unprecedented changes were starting to happen in the Manhattan business. Again, Fox recalls, "The industry was evolving so much, because co-brokering had become very much part of its fabric at this point. And so there was a greater need to have interaction among fellow real estate brokers and to have the owners and managers of the firms know each other and be able to pick up the phone and make calls to each other. That had never been a part of life before, but it became almost a necessity. Our first committee got this going."

While it may have started with getting the heads of firms to know each other better, the most recent consequence of this type of cooperation - the increasing trend toward co-broking and today's technology - was an information system called "Lex." Coming out of a committee which Fox helped initiate, the idea was to make the task of sharing listings more efficient. Under the traditional system, Manhattan residential firms were sharing information in an antiquated fashion. Each individual firm employed listing clerks who daily typed in the mailed or faxed exclusives and updated information received from cooperating companies. The redundancy among firms was wasteful, time-consuming and expensive. However, the Manhattan residential industry had adamantly rejected the idea of a multiple listing service, with firms contending that an MLS did not lend itself to the intricacies of cooperative purchases, where intense customer screening and qualification were all important. Hence a technology that enables brokers to share listings with correspondent brokers, minus a central listing service, was needed. With this new system, LEX transfers information to the database of cooperating firms without creating a centralized database. It was, among others, Ms. Fox's vision that a technology could be created that would help brokers work more efficiently with each other. Barbara Fox played a pivotal role in getting major real estate firms to cooperate with each other in the introduction of such innovations. Notes Fox, "Although it may seem counter-intuitive in such a competitive environment, sharing certain information and working together actually make each broker more likely to succeed at his or her job."

"We take a lot of the changes that the residential industry has recently undergone for granted now," Fox says. "But while Manhattan still has this arcane system of exclusive listings and sellers who work very closely with specific real estate brokers and firms, it nevertheless has become a co-brokering community, and as such, a quasi multiple listing town." Her efforts have resulted in an unprecedented improvement in inter-firm cooperation, opening up a notion that was almost unthinkable for Manhattan brokers a dozen or so years ago.

Touching on.this, Steven Spinola noted, "Barbara Fox has been a vital force in both modernizing the residential brokerage profession and building REBNY's Residential Brokerage Division into a force that serves the profession and its clients with Vigor and effectiveness. Barbara's leadership as a founder of the Residential Brokerage Division and co-chair of its Interfirm Forum has assisted agents to adapt successfully to such market trends as co-broking, promote high ethical conduct among our members, elevate the profession's reputation, and energize its philanthropic work. Barbara's many invaluable contributions have been recognized with the Real Estate Board's Henry Foster Award for professional accomplishment, impeccable character and service to the community."

As Fox looks back on 10 years with her own firm, it is also evident that it's not only the residential brokerage industry that has evolved. The entire residential market has turned around over the same period. Ten years ago, the Dow Jones Average was below 2700, and the real estate market had a huge surfeit of unsold inventory. Developers had over-built, and sponsors had over-converted. In those days, the best brokers, including her own team, were able to survive because they were able to create a market despite the conditions. Today, the market is difficult for entirely different reasons, notes Fox. "There is a scarcity of inventory. Product doesn't stay on the market long. There are bidding wars, and frequently, deals previously thought to be solid fall apart because a seller chooses to take a higher offer." In today's market, notes Fox, the best brokers survive because they are able to keep deals together, despite the forces at work which pull them apart in an overheated market. "This rests significantly on the ability to pin down a home's real market value in a constantly fluctuating market, and keep everyone at the table, even while other offers are flying around trying to intercept the parties," she says.

In terms of the future, especially on the role of brokers, Fox says, "I see us making even greater use of technology, computers, the Internet, imaging, wireless Internet and the rest; and while it may be possible for this technology to increasingly enable buyers and sellers to find each other directly, the size of these transactions absolutely demands the input of a real estate professional."

As with any other transaction, the real estate broker is more than someone who puts the two parties together, explains Fox. "I know of situations where buyers and sellers had found each other without the help of a real estate broker, but they still called in brokers to represent each side's interest, for expert validation and negotiation of pricing, for co-op board packages, and to serve as the deal's balancing mechanism. I just don't see the role of the real estate broker going out of the window."