80 Years Young ... and Still Going Strong!

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Ray Booth is a kidder, a flirt and a consummate raconteur. With an easy grin and a deep laugh, he keeps his clients entertained.
 
But the Annandale real estate agent gets serious when it comes to a transaction, and when he's asked if his age might ever be an issue for him.
 
"I don't find it a hindrance at all. Or a help either," said Booth, who turns 81 next month. "I'm not interested in retiring because I really enjoy what I'm doing. I enjoy working with people, talking with them. And you feel good when you manage to get people in a house."
 
Real estate agents older than 65 are relatively rare -- about 1 in 10 of all sales agents -- but the percentage has grown steadily in recent years, according to surveys by the National Association of Realtors. Eighty-year-olds are rarer still.
 
But Booth is not the only longtime agent in his office, which makes for an even more unusual situation. Five agents in the Annandale office of Coldwell Banker Residential have hit or are about to hit the big 8-0. Besides Booth, they are Gordon Frederick, 80 in December; Esmond Stanton, 80 next month; Helen Susko, 81; and Gwendalyn Cody, who admits only that "I'm 29 and I have been for many years."
 
While many Americans want to exit the workaday world as early as possible to move into that vacation home full time or to relax in luxury active-adult communities, the eighties bunch in Annandale says the sedentary life is not for them. Their focus, instead, is on keeping busy, and avoiding the other A's associated with aging: Alzheimer's disease and assisted living.

"I can't imagine retiring," said Cody, who has been in the real estate business since 1986, after serving in Paris as an Army cartographer in World War II, meeting her husband-to-be, Robert Cody, on the day the war ended, touring overseas and in San Francisco as a civilian, raising a family, traveling to foreign countries and then serving in the 1980s as a Republican member of Virginia's House of Delegates.
 
"I'm in great health, I know what I'm doing. And I love people," Cody said. "And I plan on doing it as long as I can. I have longevity in my veins. My mother is 101-and-a-half and she still lives on her own and does not want anyone telling her what to do."
 
The views these agents hold of the future are reflected in AARP surveys showing that more people older than 65 are choosing to stay on the job. The real estate association also is finding from its surveys that more agents are keeping their hand in well into their golden years.

While the typical sales agent was 42 in 1978, the median age in 2003 was 49, according to the most recent survey by the National Association of Realtors.

The percentage older than  55 jumped during that time to 34 percent from 21 percent. And the share that was 65 and older doubled.
 
The nation's unprecedented housing boom, with its three-year string of record sales and record prices, might be the biggest reason the average age is increasing. It also helps explain the flood of new agents into the business.
 
But the boom isn't the only reason, according to the Annandale agents. They all say they stay in the game because they love the work, the camaraderie and the ability to set their own hours.
 
And they note that with so many agents out there, the game isn't easy these days.
 
"This kind of market is not always fun," Booth said.

"When there are 17 agents working to get the same property . . . you've got to explain to your buyer why they didn't get it. . . . And for the listing agent, it's a lot of work, too. They've got to study all these offers. . . . And if you have a case where a deal falls apart, you've got to do it all over again."
 
Frederick, who retired to real estate at age 65 after a career as a technical engineer at Unisys, said: "I'm not out to make a lot of money. I do it to have something to do that I like, to meet people and to build relationships."
 
Frederick, who started in 1989, when business was "fairly lean,"  said he moved into real estate after retirement because "you get to choose your own hours. When I retired I didn't want to do an 8-to-5 type job, I wanted to do something where I had basic control over my job."
 
Frederick, a slight white-haired man, is still on the job almost every day except Sunday. "You gotta keep busy; otherwise you would retire where you wouldn't want to be," he said.
 
He added, "If you don't do anything, what are you going to do? You just sit around, you deteriorate."
 
None of the five are working just for the money, said Marty Seidman, the broker who runs the Annandale office. "They just seem to like doing it."
 
Seidman said younger agents frequently consult with the three men, who are often in the office, because of their experience and knowledge. "It's their personalities, their concern for people. You learn with years how to deal with people, how to understand them.
 
Frederick, he said, represents the office during meetings with top Coldwell staff. Stanton, Cody and Susko, he said, have been top producers, with million-dollar years.
 
While the three men have been upfront about their ages, the two ladies only fessed up recently when pressed. "Nobody in my office knew until today, although they may have speculated," Cody said last week. "But as a longtime Rotarian, I have to tell the truth."
 
Cody, known as a big kidder to her colleagues, admonished: "Nobody who is properly brought up would ever ask a woman her age, her weight or how much she makes."
 
Susko, who started in real estate 43 years ago, has the longest string of million-dollar sales years. There have been 26 or 27 during her career, many of them with Town & Country Properties Inc., which was bought by Coldwell Banker a decade ago.
 
Susko is not about to quit, unless she has to, but she said she did "slow down" a lot after her husband died in 2001. She had already moved her office home so she could work while he was ill, though -- that's consistent with her philosophy that real estate is a full-time job.
 
Susko, who returned to work last Friday after taking a couple days off following minor spinal surgery, said she learned her lesson about the work ethic early on.
 
"I got into it because I thought I could do it part time and still take care of my daughter," she recalled. "I soon found out that there is no such thing as part time, if you're doing your job well."
 
Most of her business these days is referrals and "second-generations," she said -- that is, the children of previous customers. She doesn't do "cold calling" or work in the "bullpen," taking general inquiries that come into the office.
 
"Once in a while the subject [of retirement] comes up," with her daughter, Susko said. "But I don't want to sit at home. I enjoy my job and I always have."
 
Her worry now is that she can remain well and up for the pace. "I work whenever I have work to do, every day if I need to," she said. "Because when you've got customers you got to check the market every day. And in this market, you have to check it every hour."
 
Her daughter, Carol, she said, has been "my biggest asset. She was always good about answering the phone, taking messages as a child. And she still does it."
 
Susko married right after World War II. She had worked for the Army Air Corps during the war, supervising an office that kept track of shipping manifests, and then for the Navy and Transportation Departments afterward. Her last job before real estate was as a clerical worker for the Air Force at the Pentagon.
 
Booth also wound up at the Pentagon before going into real estate. He was mobilized in 1940 as a member of the Army National Guard in Oklahoma and spent 27 months in the European theater of the war, transmitting messages as a radio operator. He worked as a salesman for meatpacker Swift & Co. before getting recalled to the Korean War in 1950 as a member of the California National Guard,
 
He sold life insurance for a time and then rejoined the California Guard, and in 1967 was on active duty during the Vietnam era in Washington state. His boss "said you have to have a tour at the Pentagon before you leave," so he followed orders and moved east. He retired in 1979 as chief of the logistics division for the guard.
 
But before he did that, Booth recalled, he signed up for real estate school. "I decided I'll give it a year's try and if I liked it, I'll stay."
 
His first client "called me up from California, we used to be in the same outfit . . . and said you've got to find me a house."
 
Esmond Stanton, who goes by "Ed," also got to real estate via the military.
 
The tall Canadian native was a schoolteacher and then a freight checker for the Canadian Pacific Railway before working in the engine department for a bomber fleet that was turned into a passenger service.
 
He became a U.S. citizen and worked for the Air Force during the Berlin airlift in 1948 and 1949, then served during the Korean War. In 1952 he got a civilian job, which took him to Loring Air Force Base in Maine and then to the Presidio in San Francisco. He came to Washington in 1963 with the General Services Administration and then transferred to a defense agency, from which he retired in 1982.
 
Stanton had more pressing reasons than his colleagues for entering the business, which he did in 1974, before he retired: He had three children in college and another on the verge.
 
"I couldn't afford to pay their tuition," he said, "so I was compelled to go into it."
 
Although part-time agents weren't generally accepted in those days, Stanton said he got an exception "because I told them if I don't do good in 90 days, I'm out the door."
 
Instead, he hung in, and went full time in 1985. He now sports a tie-pin with five diamonds for highest sales during five separate time periods.
 
Stanton caters to first-time buyers, particularly Ethiopian immigrants. "About 60 to 70 percent of what I do is Ethiopian, . . . because about six years ago, at an open house, I sold a property on Braddock Road to [an Ethiopian client] for $500,000 and it's probably worth around $3 million now."
 
That client came back for surrounding properties, Stanton said, and passed his name to friends.
 
While Stanton says he works many fewer hours now than when he started, he says he long ago changed his schedule to meet the needs of the job. He and his wife attend Catholic services on "Saturday nights so we could hold open houses on Sundays."
 
He comes into the office, he said, "whenever I have to, as the client materializes."
 
While Booth said he sells about 12 properties a year and lists about six, the others talk more in generalities.
 
Stanton, for instance, said he does about twice as many sales as listings. Age has never been an issue, according to the grandfather of 12 (the 13th is due next month). "I have never that I know of had a dissatisfied customer. Every one of them have made money."
 
Stanton and his colleagues agree that the biggest changes in their years of service have been the introduction of computer technology and the continuing strength of the housing market.
 
Though one-time systems analyst Stanton knows plenty about large-scale computer operations, he said he doesn't try to keep up with all the technology being ushered into the market. First of all, he said, it keeps changing.
 
Secondly, "I concentrate on just two or three programs that I need to know, to get to the bottom line faster." Most of the time, he can calculate the financial details "all in my head," he said.
 
"I don't forget a telephone number," he added, "as long as I'm working with it. But after it's done I can't get it back."
 
"I'm not inclined to learn something new," Booth said about the increasingly complex computerization of real estate. "I get by with as little as I can."
 
Cody said that's it's not only the computer technology that has changed, but also the paperwork. "I thought that with the computers there would be much less paper involved, but not everyone [buying or selling] has a computer at home" to consult. "Also, there are many, many more rules. When I came in, asbestos disclosure was a big deal. Then it was radon, and now mold. And lenders are concerned about ability to pay."
 
The hot market stuns not only would-be home buyers, but also the veteran agents, children of the Depression.
 
"It's frightening," Susko said. "Both the prices and the way people buy with so little down. Some of them don't seem to give it a helluva lot of thought."
 
The outspoken agent said she cautions buyers against "highly emotional" bids. "I tell them you've got to be prepared for different things in the future, so make sure you know what you're doing before you get in there for 30 years and find out you can't pay."
 
Agents "have to be careful" not to put clients into deals they regret or can't handle, she said, "because that buyer today may come back and be a seller later on, and your actions today may keep him from coming back."
 
Booth, whose clients are mostly former military acquaintances or their relatives and referrals, shares that philosophy. And he says that's why his longtime clients don't make a big deal about age.
 
But he can reel off satisfied new customers, too: "I just worked with a young couple, who only got married six months ago -- a couple in their mid-twenties  who I got from a mutual friend -- and we just got them settled into a new house. They needed someone conversant with the market and I guess I fit the bill."
 
The young clients, software engineer Jeoff Wilks, 24, and his wife, Rachel Wyatt, 27, had some brief second thoughts when they met him at the site and saw that he was older. But after Booth briskly trotted them around to three houses that night, including a stop at the condo they eventually bought, the couple were sold on him.
 
"He definitely doesn't look as old as he is. He's very energetic," Wilks said. "And I got the impression that he's a good negotiator. Maybe there's something about being older that helps."
 
He added, "His age definitely adds perspective. When I said I didn't know about buying, that this was a whole lot of money, he mentioned that the first home he purchased cost him $4,500 and he had had no idea how he was going to afford it either. That settled it for me."