Real Estate in the 1920s, of Realtus and Realtyettes
This Month in Real Estate History – February 2010: Eighty years ago almost all REALTORS® were men. That didn’t stop women’s organizations from forming, including the Realtus Club in Columbus, Ohio.
Membership was open to the wives of all members of the Columbus Board. In February 1924, Realtus Club President Mrs. William Schleckman reported a membership numbering 42 that gathered on the second Tuesday night of the month. Dinner was followed by a business meeting and then a program. The program topic might be interior decorating, landscape gardening, civic matters, art or literature. Guest speakers sometimes addressed the members.
Mrs. Schleckman said the club was valuable to its members at national and state conventions. “Here husband Realtors are usually well acquainted while a feeling of strangeness exists among the many women,” she wrote. “The Realtus Club has been instrumental in the elimination of (that) sense of loneliness substituting therefore a camaraderie which has made attendance at conventions a pleasure for the visiting ladies.”
The 1920s witnessed other movements of women into real estate. In the Pacific Northwest the “Realtyettes” aimed to include all women who worked in real estate offices, but the group was short-lived. In 1927 the National Association’s governing board authorized a committee to meet with the Realtyettes and determine if a women’s organization was feasible under the National Association’s umbrella. Respected leaders like Phillip V. W. Fry of Portland, Walter J. Ruediger from Belleville, Illinois, and future NAR President Walter S. Schmidt of Cincinnati studied the possibility. But it would take another eleven years before the Association’s first national meeting for women in real estate. At the 1938 national convention in Milwaukee 37 women from nine states met at the Schroeder Hotel, and the Women’s Council of REALTORS® was born.
Oak Park REALTOR® Opened Builders Library
This Month in Real Estate History – January 2010: In 1911 an innovation was introduced to help Chicago-area home builders. It was the “Ho
me Builders Library,” established by REALTOR® George R. Hemingway of Oak Park, Illinois. Hemingway was a prominent home builder as well as the uncle of then 11 year-old Ernest Hemingway, who would become one of America’s most famous writers.
George Hemingway said the library “was established for the benefit of persons who have an inclination toward building a home of their own, but do not know just how to go about it.” Connected to his offices, the library’s collection included “house book plans and bungalow design books, catalogues and books from the most prominent concerns in the country dealing with the subjects of plumbing, bath room designs, fireplace designs…and several monthly periodicals.”
“It is my aim to have in the library every bit of material that will be of benefit to home builders.”
In its January 15, 1911 issue, the National Real Estate Journal gave the library good reviews. “It consists of a beautifully furnished room with comfortable chairs and appropriate wall hangings and is open and free to the public during office hours.” The Journal also noted “The broker who is best equipped to furnish advice and information to his customers naturally attracts the better class of investors and profits by the service that he renders them.”
Read the full article here.
Your Agent Is Worth His Commission
DECEMBER 2009 — Real estate agents “have spent many years in acquiring a knowledge of their work and these men serve you skillfully and well.” So wrote M. L. Dye, President of First Federal Savings in Salt Lake City in a December 1957 article for the National Real Estate and Building Journal. “There are many fine and reputable agents whose judgment you may trust and whose ability will serve you abundantly by saving you time, inconvenience and often money.”
“When you buy a house,” Dye wrote, “do you calculate the value of all the advertising, equipment and time of all the agents that have been placed at your disposal?”
Meet Me in California…Again
NOVEMBER 2009 — “There is something stimulating about a convention,” the National Real Estate Journal reported in November, 1939. “It is enjoyable, for one thing, to greet old friends, to make new ones, to swap stories and experiences in the general companionship of a Realtors’ convention.”
That year 1600 REALTORS® and guests gathered at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. They came from 37 different states and the Territory of Hawaii to discuss issues vital to real estate. Accourding to the Journal, those included “the reclamation of blighted areas of our cities; brokerage problems involved in business shifts; building houses for low-income groups; and the ever-present bugaboo of taxation.”
“There is something vitally stimulating about a convention”
NOVEMBER 2009 — “There is something stimulating about a convention,” the National Real Estate Journal reported in November, 1939. “It is enjoyable, for one thing, to greet old friends, to make new ones, to swap stories and experiences in the general companionship of a Realtors’ convention.”
That year 1600 REALTORS® and guests gathered at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. They came from 37 different states and the Territory of Hawaii to discuss issues vital to real estate. Accourding to the Journal, those included “the reclamation of blighted areas of our cities; brokerage problems involved in business shifts; building houses for low-income groups; and the ever-present bugaboo of taxation.”
Expert speakers addressed issues typical to a real estate office. Future NAR president Hobart C. Brady from Wichita spoke on salesmanship and “had his listeners asking for more.” Fred B. Snyder of Upper Darby (president of the Pennsylvania Association) gave a presentation on operating a small real estate office. Corwin D. Edwards from the Department of Justice reported on steps toward “Eliminating Abuses in the Construction Field.”
In another speech Holman D. Pettibone of the Chicago Title and Trust Company admitted that the new world war was a factor in an improving U.S. economy. However he warned, “If America enters into this quarrel among the nations of Europe, private enterprise as we know it in this country today will cease to exist…business has nothing to gain and much to lose by participation in the present European struggle.”
A notable feature of the convention was the official beginning of the Women’s Council of REALTORS®, “a section for women Realtors to study their own business problems.” More than a hundred attended an “enthusiastic luncheon.”
Los Angeles had previously hosted the convention in 1915. When registration lists were compared it was determined that 31 REALTORS® at the Biltmore had also attended the meeting at Trinity Auditorium 24 years earlier. Included were luminaries like William May Garland and Harry Culver of Los Angeles, Nathan William MacChesney of Chicago, R. Bruce Douglas of Milwaukee, Fred Taylor from Portland, and Louis F. Eppich of Denver.
REALTORS® of 1939 knew how to have fun as well. Entertainment included “‘A Night in Old California,’ a real Spanish fiesta and fandango.” Actor Monte Blue was master of ceremonies for the “Nite in Hollywood,” which included entertainers from Earle Carroll’s Follies.
Seventy years later REALTORS® will follow in their forbears’ footsteps to southern California, this time to San Diego from November 13-16. While a tour of movie stars’ homes isn’t in the program, modern day REALTORS® will enjoy a chance to meet William Shatner and Sabrina Soto.
Images from the 1939 convention are available on Flickr.
Happy 65th (or 89th?) birthday to RLI!
In October 1944, George Domm, a Michigan farm broker, became the first president of the REALTORS® Land Institute. Originally known as the Agricultural Institute, the new group was an affiliate of the National Association, created to represent the interests of real estate professionals specializing in farmland and rural properties. Over the next three years, Domm organized the Institute’s Board of Directors, created chapters in sixteen states, and nearly tripled the Institute’s original membership of 178.
But RLI’s story begins much earlier than 1944. By 1920 farm brokers were forming their own organizations in several different states. That year REALTOR® Wilbur Mansfield sent 7,000 invitations to other farm brokers around the country, asking them to attend the NAR convention that summer in his home town of Kansas City.
Hundreds responded and the Land Men Realtors Committee was formed. In 1923 the Farm Lands Division of the National Association was born. Before the decade was out the division would boast more than 2,000 members. But the Great Depression hit the land men hard. At the end of 1935 there were only 99 members. In 1940 the farm group became a section of the Brokers’ Division.
Still, the farm brokers felt a need for their own organization. In late 1943 a small group of farm brokers approached NAR’s Board of Directors at its meeting in Cleveland and politely suggested that they “might be interested in having a special division.” The next year, the National Association authorized the formation of the Agricultural Institute.
For more details on RLI’s story, see page 31 of the Fall 2009 issue of Terra Firma.
Staging Advice from Emily Post
SEPTEMBER 2009 — “The requirement of a house of charm is that it shall be completely satisfying to live in.” So wrote American etiquette expert Emily Post in September, 1943, for the National Real Estate Journal. “Comfort …means perfect adjustment to whatever it may please you to have or to do…it means the adaptability of the surroundings that are yours, to your family and to you.”
“Beautiful objects contribute to a beautiful house,” Post wrote, “and yet, cost as a standard of beauty could not be a less accurate test. Many simple little houses that have scarcely an object of value are utterly friendly, convenient and delightful. Many great houses are so austerely unwelcoming and so obviously uncomfortable, it is a wonder that their owners can bear to live in them.”
Post also favored a house with a lived-in look. “Evidences of a family’s pursuits contribute a quality which many people fail to appreciate. The sewing basket…the book on the table, with the pair of glasses beside it…a doll in a chair…a collection of pipes. It is the ‘lived in’ and ‘taken-comfort-in’ evidences that breathe life into what is otherwise only a house, and transform it into that loveliest place in the world- the place that is really HOME.”
Read the full article here. For more up-to-date staging advice, be sure to visit the Field Guide to Preparing & Staging a Home for Sale on REALTOR.org.
“The backbone of a real estate board”
AUGUST 2009 — Today they are called Association Executives, but in 1914 they were called Secretaries. Then as now they were the backbones of their local REALTOR® associations.
The National Association of REALTORS® was only six years old when Milwaukee REALTOR® R. Bruce Douglas gave a speech that was hailed as a classic, “The Backbone of a Real Estate Board.” It was published in the National Real Estate Journal in August 1914.
“A board composed of men of character, standing before a public which has been compelled to acknowledge their superior qualities is in position to demand recognition and to compel respect,” Douglas said. “But while the favorable public opinion is a valuable asset it is not the thing that makes the machine go.
“Where is the backbone of a Real Estate Board? Your secretary if he be made of the right material, has enthusiasm, power and ability…he sees and meets the people who have business with your Board. He voices your affairs every day in the year. He handles the little things and…you know it is the little things that count.”
Douglas was an NAR founder and Vice President. While he was national Secretary in 1912 he helped organize the first Secretaries’ Conference (known as the AE Institute today) at the national convention in Louisville.
