Mark White and John Skrabec stand in front of their storefront office at 32nd and Lowell.

Live Urban Real Estate has grown to 50 agents in four years, but owners John Skrabec and Mark White haven’t recruited any of them.

“They have all contacted us,” said Skrabec, who had a 20-year career in marketing and advertising, before becoming involved in real estate, first as an agent, and then at Live (pronounced as in where you “live.”)

The boutique firm, which is gaining a national reputation for innovate and cutting edge marketing, wants agents, who like the firm itself, have a certain urban style and attitude.

Their efforts have not gone unnoticed.

Inman focuses spotlight on Live Urban

Last month, at the the annual Inman News Connect conference in San Francisco – a huge industry event – Live Urban was highlighted as a “Next Generation” Beta Brokerage firm. Pedal to Properties, in Boulder-based firm that specializes in touring homes with clients using bicycles, also was named as a Beta Brokerage firm. Live Urban and Pedal to Properties were the only two firms selected from the Mountain region.

At the Inman conference, Skrabec also spoke on a panel about how to build a brand online, with brokers from the Good Life Team in Austin, Texas, and MRealty of Portland, Oregon. Skrabec’s 10 commandments for brand-building include: Focusing on a specific market area; recreate bricks and mortar offices into a virtual online experience; broadcast a consistent message through all media and mimic the style of your clients, but not of your competitors.

It takes courage to take a risk in challenging times

“Live Urban was identified as a company that is truly a “Next Generation Brokerage,” said Sherry Chris, president and CEO of Better Home and Gardens, who was involved in the selection process. “Live is thinking outside of the box with respect to best practices and that take s courage in these challenging times.”

She also lauded Live for its”savvy branding and focus on new ways of doing business that target today’s active urban buyers and sellers, who love city life.”

At Live, that means hiring agents who reflect their clients.

“If you a like to wear flip-flops and have tattoos, we probably want to talk to you,” Skrabec said, although certainly that isn’t the look sported by most of the agents. Rather, it reflects a company philosophy that Skrabec described this way during the panel discussion at the Inman conference: “Stand out. Be bold. Shake things up. It’s good to be different.”

Live urban: A no-tie zone

While not all the brokers push the fashion edge, you aren’t ever going to mistake a Live Urban agent for an IBM salesman. “Honestly, I don’t think you will ever find anyone at Live wearing a tie,” Skrabec said. That is true from the top down, so to speak. For this interview, Skrabec was wearing shorts, which only makes sense, as he rode his bike to work from his northwest Denver home.

There is one caveat: “If you are going to dress like that, you have to be the smartest person in the room. You can look and dress however you want, but you have to be the best at what you do. That means following the real estate procedures as required by the Colorado Division of Real Estate,” said White, who handles the administrative and book-keeping for the firm, which operates out of a 1,000-square-foot storefront at West 32nd Avenue and Lowell Boulevard, in the heart of the Highlands Square area of the hip West Highland neighborhood.

“If a broker calls me and the first thing he or she says is, “What will my commission split be,” I know right off that person is probably not going to fit in here,” White said. “If they start asking about their desk, and assistants, and someone to draw up their contracts, they are not the right fit.”

He and Skrabec estimate they hire about 30 percent of the agents they interview. Almost always, they have at least two years of experience somewhere else, because Live Urban isn’t set up to provide the start-up training novice brokers need.

A perfect example of what he was talking about is Live agent Randi Goldberg, White said. As soon as White mentioned her name, as if on cue, she walked past the conference table – adorned with baseball mitts and balls, a whimsical and subtle tribute to the Rockies, as both Skrabec and White are big baseball fans.

Punk rock Realtoress

Goldberg, with sometimes spiky hair, who was only in the office to e-mail some documents to a client, was dressed in workout clothes, as she had just completed one.

“I’m the Punk Rock Realtoress,” Goldberg said. “That is a joke from some friends of mine. If you want a Realtor wearing a suit driving you around, you are probably not the right choice for me, and I’m not the right choice for you. That’s fine. There are plenty of Realtors in suits around.”

She said she is sure there are a lot of other real estate firms that wouldn’t care how she dresses, too.

“There are some real estate firms that ignore how you dress as long as you have a real estate license and a heart beat,” Goldberg said. “But what I love about working here is that John and Mark realize we are all different and appreciate and encourage that we are different. That is different than not caring. They care very much.”

Live Urban No. 1 in NW Denver

Skrabec an architect by training, started Cactus Communications in 1990, but sold his share of the firm about a decade later. He bought and renovated some homes in the Highland area, and found that he liked real estate so much that he joined Nostalgic Homes as a real estate agent. Nostalgic Homes, now under different ownership, remains a competitor in northwest Denver. Indeed, a recent internal study they did found that so far this year, Live Urban has sold 5.7 percent of all of the homes in northwest Denver, and Nostalgic is No. 2 in northwest Denver, with 5.2 percent of the market. And during the past year, Live Urban sold 5.5 percent of the homes, followed by Nostalgic at 4.7 percent. Live Urban is No. 2 in total dollar volume sales, trailing the Kentwood City Properties, in northwest Denver, Skrabec said.

Based on year-to-date sales, Kentwood was No. 1 with $26.7 million, Live Urban No. 2 with $22.4 million and Nostalgic Homes third with $21.6 million. But Corey Wadley, a broker-owner of Nostalgic, noted that his company only has 21 agents, so overall, his agents averaged more than twice the sales volume than at Live Urban. “No one lists and sells more vintage residential real estate in Northwest Denver than we do, and we’ve been doing it for 25 years,” Wadley said.

Skrabec said until recently, he hadn’t really monitored how Live Urban was stacking up against the competition.

John Skrabec poses in front of a home in NW Denver being listed by Live Urban broker Randi Goldberg.

“To tell you the truth, we hadn’t paid too much attention to market share in the past,” Skrabec said. He and White estimate that 70 percent to 75 percent of their total sales are in northwest Denver, and 95 percent of their sales are in urban Denver neighborhoods.

Last year ,the first closed 330 transactions with a total dollar volume of $86 million. Business is up 30 percent so far this year.

Small, but tech savvy

They are a very tech-savvy office. A very tech-savvy small office.

“We have 1,000 square feet of office space, and I really think we could get by with 500 square feet,” White said. “We talked about going totally virtual, but we thought it was important to have a bricks-and-sticks location in our neighborhood. It makes us more part of the neighborhood. If you are on the 18th floor of a shiny high-rise, you are not really in the neighborhood.”

About 20 percent of their sales, they estimate, are generated from people walking by their high-profile office. As part of their branding, they’ve made their storefront to appears it has a “billboard-like,” appearance, similar to their Web site, www.liveurbandenver.com.

They’re green, of course

Leaving as small of a carbon footprint as possible, is also paramount. They try to go paperless as possible, buy 100 percent of their electricity from Xcel Energy’s Windsource program, and more than a third of their brokers have earned ‘Green” and “EcoBrokers” designations.

Technology has done away with the need to have brokers in the office, except when they are in the rotation to operate the front desk, take calls and deal with people who wander in. They have no paid staff, such as a receptionist. They use Web-based software, including CTM software for contract prep and execution,file management, record keeping and sales production . They communicate to brokers through a private WordPress blog. They update them daily on market activity, new listings, and blog posts, can order marketing materials through Google Docs. , and sign up for floor shifts at the storefront. Showings.com is used to manage showings with automatic feedback requests, social media sites such as HootSuite and Facebook are increasingly being used.

Two years ago, White stopped selling homes to devote himself to all of the back-shop operations.

Skrabec, White no longer sell homes

“First, I didn’t want to compete with our brokers, and second, I’m so busy running the business-side, I don’t really have time to sell homes anymore,” White said.

Skrabec quit selling homes a year ago. When they receive requests from past clients, they refer them to hand-picked brokers in their firm.

Skrabec handles all of the marketing material, which includes Web videos, photos and text, to select direct mail and print advertising for each home.

“It’s true our brokers have to prepare their own contracts and plan their own (For Sale) signs, but most Realtors are pretty independent and don’t mind doing that,” Skrabec said. “And it is the marketing that is the most time-consuming portion, and we take care of that for them.”

He said at any given time, he is working on a marketing plan for 75 to 100 homes. “That is a full-time job,” Skrabec said. “But that is what I did for 20 years before I started my real estate career. I say I am my own best client. I absolutely love what I do.”

Contact John Rebchook at JRCHOOK@gmail.com or 303-945-6865

Related Posts:

• LIVE Urban plans version of Amazing Race
• Case-Shiller: Denver No. 5 in December
• The real estate world changed two years ago

The Denver metro’s housing market ended last year with a 1.2 percent year-over-year gain, the best showing in 2009, according to the closely watched S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices released today.

However, the one-year change  in December was good for only fifth place of the 20 cities tracked in the index, as other cities also showed even larger one-year gains in December. San Francisco was No. 1 with a 4.8 percent gain. Dallas, San Diego, and Washington, D.C., also showed larger gains than Denver.  Las Vegas, by contrast, showed a 20.6 percent one-year drop.

Still, some local real estate officials said the jump is a good sign that the Denver housing market is on the road to recovery.  It was only the second time that Denver was in positive territory in 2009  from the same month in 2008. In November, the one-year change was 0.5%.

“Wow, that is huge,” said Mike Rinner, of the Genesis Group, which tracks housing along the Front Range. “I just stood in front of a crowd of 140 this morning and told them according to Case-Shiller we were up 0.5 percent and I expected that we would end the year at about zero. Boy, was I wrong.”

The Case-Shiller analyzes data from the same homes that have been re-sold, so it eliminates a bias of different homes in the sales mix, which can drive the average and median prices of homes up or down. For example, there have been so many distressed homes sold in Denver in recent years, that it drove the overall market down, while in more normal years, bigger homes entered the market, driving prices up.

Denver-area home market is healing

What the Case-Shiller study reflects the “healing” of prices at the lower-end, Rinner said.

“The greatest volume of home sales are occurring at the lower end,” Rinner said. “The values have been re-set as lower-end foreclosed homes hit the market, and there has been some appreciation from the lowest levels. If you look at the worst foreclosure markets in Adams, Denver and in Arapahoe counties, those markets have healed. Areas along the northeast corridor such as Green Valley Ranch and Montbello used to have the largest supply of unsold homes on the market, but now they have among the lowest,” as investors and owner-occupants have snapped them up at bargain prices.

By contrast, Rinner said not many sales are occurring in the higher price ranges and there is arguably a large over-supply of expensive homes on the market today.

But because of Case-Shiller’s methodology, it does not include the spec home constructed by a builder for $1.2 million, which never sold and is now going through the foreclosure process and likely will eventually be sold for $400,000 or $500,000, Rinner said.

“Also, at the upper end, owners are less inclined to take a hit, so they won’t sell it in today’s market if they don’t have to,” Rinner said. “So they are just sitting there until the market improves.”

Home values, not ranking, important

Rinner said that Denver’s drop in the ranking is not a concern. Because areas such as San Francisco have had such huge drops in the past, he said it is not a surprise that they may jump as they start emerging from the bottom.

Independent broker Gary Bauer said that the Case-Shiller showing reflects the price gains that have occurred in the Denver area during the past six months.

“It’s been a nice, steady upward movement,” Bauer said. “From my perspective, we were the first coming into it, and we will be the first coming out.”

But Bauer said he is a  ”little surprised that we dropped in the ranking. I didn’t realize that San Francisco is starting its recovery.”

Indeed, he is consulting with a person who three years ago bought a house outside of San Francisco for about $650,000. The owner then put another $300,000 into it. Now, he would like to sell it and move to the Dallas area to be closer to family.

But it’s not worth anything close to $1 million.

“Unfortunately, he bought at the wrong time of the real estate cycle,” Bauer said. “It’s worth maybe $650,000, max. I really don’t know what he can do other than just wait.”

Meanwhile, Bauer is working with a first-time buyer who hopes to take advantage of the $8,000 federal tax credit, which requires that the house is placed under contract by April 30.

“It’s a condo in northeast Aurora that the original owner bought for $143,000,” Bauer said. “We have it under contract for $90,000.”

Tax credit play role

But John P. Cochran, the Dean of the School of Business at Metropolitan State College of Denver, wonders if the tax credit for first-time buyers, which was extended in early November, may have skewed the numbers late last year.

“It’s hard for me, right now, to accurately interpret the numbers of November and December,” Cochran said. “People were uncertain whether the $8,000 tax credit was going to be extended, so there may have been some acceleration going on as we moved closer to that date when it might have expired. I’m guessing that may have caused a one-time bump.”

John Skrabec, the broker-owner of Live Urban Real Estate, said he thinks that the tax credit, which now requires a buyer to place a home under contract by April 30, did help the market late last year. Qualified current owners also have a $6,500 tax credit. The homes must be closed by the end of June to get the credits.

“I think that sales might be front-loaded to the first part of this year, because of the credits,” Skrabec said. “I am a little nervous about what is going to happen after they are gone.”

Still, he said the gain in the Case-Shiller report is an “encouraging sign.”

And he said it doesn’t bother him that some other markets jumped past Denver, although he was surprised that cities such as San Francisco and San Diego saw such big percentage gains.

“I think that is just the pattern that Denver has echoed over time,” Skrabec said. ‘We don’t usually have the biggest drops, but we don’t have the biggest increases, either. Our little chart doesn’t go up and down as some other cities.”

Also, he said that certain neighborhoods have shown much greater appreciation, from the bottom of the market, than the 1.2 percent overall gain reflects.

“Prices have gone up a lot in southwest Denver, in neighborhoods like Ruby Hill and Athmar Park,” Skrabec said. “They were beaten up pretty bad, and there has been a lot of investors fixing and flipping homes there. Prices have been going up. Most of the demand has been from the bottom up, and that’s all right. The market is gong to recover from the bottom up, not from the top down.”

And even higher-priced homes are moving in northwest Denver neighborhoods such as West Highland and Berkeley, he said. Neighborhoods such as City Park and Uptown, also are doing well. “But it’s still pretty tough outside of the city neighborhoods in the suburbs,” he said.

Denver housing up for 5 straight months

Chris Mygatt, president of Coldwell Banker Real Estate in Colorado, said that while the Case-Shiller report is a positive sign, he thinks the market is poised to recover even faster than its report shows.

“If you look at the MLS (Metrolist) data from January, it marked five consecutive months of average prices increasing in Denver,” Mygatt said. “We had not seen that in three years. That is in conjunction with the inventory down to 17,000, plus or minus, low interest rates, and the tax credits, we could be in store for a pretty decent rebound.”

Mygatt said he does not think there is much chance that the tax credits will be extended beyond their current expiration dates. But he thinks that will keep the government buying mortgage-backed securities to keep interest rates low.

Jeff Bernard, a broker with RE/MAX Alliance and principal of Bernard Real Estate Analytics, said his “hunch” is that San Francisco home prices rose so much is because wealthy foreigners took advantage of a weak dollar to buy houses there last year.

He said he thinks that Denver’s overall appreciation is probably caused by homes from $90,000 to $350,000, which have bounced from lower levels, which offset homes at the upper end that have been heavily discounted from their original prices. “I would imagine there would be a fairly large standard deviation if you broke the numbers down by price points,” Bernard said.

Still, Cochran said it is good news that home prices in Denver are moving in the right direction.

“Having a positive number is good, but certainly I have to look at it very, very cautiously as an indicator of where we are heading,” Cochran said.

Nationally, home values improve YOY

Overall, the 10-City and 20-City Composites continued to show improvement in their annual rates of return. In fact, all 20 metro areas and the two composites saw improvement in their annual returns compared to November’s data. Only three cities – Detroit, Las Vegas and Tampa – still showed double digit annual rates of decline as of the end of 2009. Miami, Phoenix and Seattle all moved above such rates with December’s report.

But the areas did not fare as well from November to December. Denver lost 0.8 percent, compared to a loss of 0.2 percent for the 20 cities in the index. Only three cities – Chicago, Cleveland and Dallas – showed bigger month-t0-moth declines than Denver.

“As measured by prices, the housing market is definitely in better shape than it was this time last year, as the pace of deterioration has stabilized for now. However, the rate of improvement seen during the  summer of 2009 has not been sustained,” says David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor’s. “In the most recent months we are seeing fewer and fewer MSAs reporting monthly gains in prices. Only four cities saw month to month improvements in December over November, when you look at the raw data. We are in a seasonally slow period for home prices, however, so it is not surprising to see better statistics in the seasonally-adjusted data, where 14 of the markets and the two monthly composites all rose in December. Similarly, the National Composite fell by 1.1% in the fourth quarter, but rose by 1.6% on a seasonally-adjusted basis.”

Metropolitan Area	November-December Change	1-Year Change from December
Atlanta	-0.7%	-4.0%
Boston	-0.1%	0.5%
Charlotte	-0.7%	-3.8%
Chicago	-1.6%	-7.2%
Cleveland	-0.8%	-1.2%
Dallas	-0.9%	3.0%
DENVER	-0.8%	1.2%
Detroit	0.0%	-10.3%
Las Vegas	0.2%	-20.6%
Los Angeles	1.0%	0.0%
Miami	-0.3%	-9.9%
Minneapolis	-0.5%	-2.3%
New York	-0.7%	-6.3%
Phoenix	0.5%	-9.2%
Portland	-0.3%	-5.4%
San Diego	0.1%	2.7%
San Francisco	-0.2%	4.8%
Seattle	-0.7%	-7.9%
Tampa	-0.6%	-11.0%
Washington, D.C.	-0.2%	1.9%
Composite-10	-0.2%	-2.4%
Composite-20	-0.2%	-3.1%

Month	1-Year Change	Rank
January	-5.1%	2
February	-5.7%	2
March	-5.5%	1
April	-4.9%	1
May	-4.6%	4
June	-3.6%	3
July	-2.9%	3
August	-1.2%	2
September	-1.2%	1
October	-0.1%	1
November	0.5%	3
December	1.25	5

Source: Standard & Poor’s, Fiserv

Contact John Rebchook at JRCHOOK@gmail.com or 303-945-6865.

Related Posts:

• Denver housing market strong in February
• The real estate world changed two years ago
• LIVE Urban plans version of Amazing Race
• Highland vibe electric, eclectic
• Live Urban living large