Most days in Los Angeles, it's hard to throw a stick without hitting a reality show alumna, an investment banker who followed his midlife crisis west or a real estate agent. But on Tuesdays, you won't find the latter at the gym or a power lunch. They're "on caravan," a weekly ritual that has become more frenzied as home prices spiral upward and scarce inventory makes otherwise sane people beg to pay more for a place to live than their parents probably earned in a lifetime. Every Tuesday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., residential real estate agents roam from city streets to wooded canyons to the beach in search of properties to sell to buyers whose lust for a new home seems to grow more intense every day that interest rates remain low.
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L.A. gold rush
The Tuesday caravan is a vital weekly ritual for real estate agents in a rising market.
Caravan day is a time to beat the competition to a good deal, to trade gossip, to spread rumors, network and brag. It used to be attended by professionals only, but brokers who have learned that the race is won by the swift sometimes bring clients along now. Better to caravan with a potential buyer than to bring him or her back to a house the next day only to find it sold.
The Tuesday before last, Nancy Gerber and a client, a recently divorced woman with two young children, visited 13 open houses on caravan day, traveling from the Hollywood Hills to Bel-Air. Gerber, who works out of Coldwell Banker's Studio City office, hired a Town Car and driver. "I'd never done that before," she says, "but for 42 bucks an hour, plus a tip, you know, it gave me time to focus on my client and not on where I was going. It was nice."
One week later, Gerber begins planning her strategy on Monday morning, when the Caravan Express, a 200-plus-page black-and-white guide to Southern California's 21st century gold rush, arrives at her office. She chooses open houses with several clients in mind. There's a fashion designer who wants to buy a house for under $500,000 as income property and a Canadian actor and his wife who are moving here because he's been cast in a TV series. The couple liked Gerber's only remaining listing, a $1.7-million hacienda in the Hollywood Hills, but they don't want to spend more than $1.2 million. Gerber thinks a family man now living up in the hills who complained to her about not having a yard where his children and dogs can play could become a client if she finds him the right home under $2 million.
Ordinarily, she tours four to six houses on caravan day, but there are a lot of new listings that could be worth looking at in the central and east San Fernando Valley. "Sometimes I'll just caravan in West Hollywood," she says. "Sometimes I just do Hancock Park. I like to mix it up. There's tons to see in the Valley today." She targets 16 houses in Sherman Oaks and Studio City, an admittedly ambitious itinerary, highlights destinations on photocopied pages of the Thomas Guide and climbs into her black Range Rover, armed with a cellphone, trail mix, apples and bottles of water.
Gerber got her real estate license four years ago, so she hasn't known a time when the market wasn't sizzling. "Caravan is one of my funnest days," she says, "because I love looking at houses. That's one reason I went into real estate. I used to make my husband crazy because I'd spend every Sunday going to open houses, and we weren't even looking to buy a house. So he said, 'Would you just go get your license and make money doing this?' " She did and she has, in the low six figures every year.
When Gerber strides up to a house, she'll sometimes swing her narrow hips, unconsciously falling into the runway walk she mastered while modeling in Europe 20 years ago, just out of Marin County's Sir Francis Drake High School. Tall and curvy, she has long, dark hair, large green eyes and the symmetrical features of a beauty queen. An occasional malapropism or Valleygirlism creeps into her speech, and she's acquired the occupational habit of dropping zeroes -- a $900,000 property costs "nine hundred." She tempers accessibility with enough hauteur to avoid seeming unctuous. "I'm really good at meeting people for the first time. It's an either-you-have-it-or-you-don't kind of thing."
Drawing on emotion
The first stop is an undistinguished traditional that's been given new landscaping and a slick interior makeover. A sign on the front door instructs visitors to remove their shoes, so the ebonized wood floor won't get scratched. It is what brokers call an "emotional" house, all mood and romance, and Gerber is initially seduced. "I'd give it a star," she says. At $1,650,000, she considers the property overpriced, but the listing agent acts as if she's the mother of the last virgin in the kingdom the day Prince Charming announces he's ready to take a bride. It will be open Sunday, she tells Gerber, but will probably be sold by then.
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