FEATURE: Thomas M. Stevens, 2006 NAR President

BY STACEY MONCRIEFF

Taste of the Future

The life of Thomas M. Stevens is a study in forward motion. Whether he’s preparing a meal for a dozen friends or plotting the future of organized real estate, the 2006 NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® president is always on the go.

“Tom knows what he wants to get done — and he’s going to get it done,” says Bill Ellis, Stevens’s boss and mentor for 18 years at Shannon & Luchs, a prominent Washington, D.C., area real estate company that was acquired by Weichert, REALTORS®, in 1993.

After that sale, for example, Stevens spent a few months with area giant Long & Foster, REALTORS®, before jumping at the chance to buy the Coldwell Banker franchise for Northern Virginia. He built Coldwell Banker Stevens from 400 associates in 11 offices to just under 2,000 associates in 39 offices before selling the brokerage to NRT Inc. of Parsippany, N.J., in 2002.

At the time the company was the 37th largest real estate brokerage in the country, according to REALTOR® Magazine’s “Top 100 Companies” ranking. Stevens stayed on to manage the new company, Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage Mid-Atlantic. By 2004, when he moved into his current position — senior vice president for NRT Inc. — the company had nearly 5,000 associates and 500 employees.

“I’m not a status quo guy,” says Stevens, his predilection for progress reflected in his motto for the year, “Tomorrow’s future is today.” On Oct. 27 he was installed as president of the 1.2 million member NAR, capping off three decades of service to the REALTOR® organization. Stevens steps into the presidency during a time when REALTORS® face numerous challenges, including a federal lawsuit calling NAR’s Internet policies anticompetitive and a Government Accountability Office report shining a spotlight on competitiveness.

“We could not have a better person going into the office,” says his good friend Joe Funkhouser, a former Virginia Association of REALTORS® president, chair of the Virginia Real Estate Commission, and broker-owner of Coldwell Banker Funkhouser, REALTORS®, in Harrisonburg, Va. “Let’s take the friendship out of it. He understands the political arena, the real estate community, the finance community, and just plain business.”

Stevens doesn’t believe the current attention on competitiveness will fundamentally change the business. Unlike in a travel or insurance transaction, people still depend on an expert to guide them through a real estate purchase. Besides, “the real estate industry is as competitive as it has ever been,” he says, leafing through some mail in his home office and pulling out a flyer from a local practitioner offering to take his first listing in the community for 0 percent. “This is because of competition and because of technology,” he says. Still, Stevens isn’t content to hunker down and defend the old ways. “When you’re criticized, you need to take a look internally and see if you’re doing things as well as you could be,” he says.

He says the association should examine its practices to ensure it’s not creating unnecessary barriers to entry in the business. In light of debates over MLS data ownership, he’d like to take an organization-wide look at what changes will guarantee the future viability of the MLS. A third priority for Stevens is to establish a new competency for the association — providing resources to members who operate related businesses, such as mortgage and insurance services. “These services are no longer ancillary to the business,” he says, “they’re primary.”

If Stevens’s ambition is outsized, his ego is not. In pursuit of his goals, he’s willing to tackle any task, big or small. “In my career, I’ve never asked someone to do what I wouldn’t do — and didn’t do. I mean, I would clean the sign rooms. If my agents came in and helped, great, but nothing was ‘below’ me,” says Stevens. “That’s what’s fun about life; I love doing it all.”

Competing to Win

Stevens’s love of business was evident at an early age. As a teenager, he ran a profitable lawn-mowing service with five employees. He also earned money operating an annual Christmas tree stand. During college, he added another enterprise, moving model-home furniture for the Yeonas Co., the largest homebuilder in his Vienna, Va., hometown.

His father, Norm, sold new construction for the Yeonas Co. and taught his son that, with hard work, anything was possible. “My dad had polio at age 7, and as a result he had the use of only one leg,” Stevens says. “But that never held him back. When you grow up with a father who has one leg and he’s providing a living for four children, you think, I have no room to complain about anything. I’ve always said, I hope I can accomplish on two legs half of what he accomplished on one.”

Stevens followed his father into the business in 1972 but focused on resales. From the start, he looked for ways to outwit his competition. “If another agent followed my listing presentation,” he says, “after that person’s appointment, I’d leave a package of materials on the sellers’ doorstep so that they would find it in the morning and think, ‘Wow! He came back last night and did this for us!’”

That competitive streak is a big part of what drives Stevens, says Funkhouser, who travels to Scotland with his friend every year for two weeks of golf. “Tom likes to win,” Funkhouser says emphatically. So how does he react when he loses a round? “As a gentleman—but he prepares for the next day.”

Indeed, careful preparation is another Stevens hallmark. “When people ask me, ‘How do I get started in a business?’ I tell them, ‘Numbers don’t lie. Write out your plan,’” he says. “I’ve always done that, whether it was a brokerage or a Christmas tree stand. I figured, how many days am I going to be selling trees? How many trees do I need to sell to pay for my expenses, whether it’s the cost of the trees, the car or gas to get there, the chainsaw gas to cut the wood to put in the kettles so people can stand around and be warm. You have to consider everything.”

Stevens went through that painstaking process in 1993 when he was analyzing the Coldwell Banker franchise purchase. “I spent 48 hours, without coming home, in my accountant’s basement,” he says. “I didn’t want somebody else beating me to the punch.”

Path to the Majors

Back when he was getting his start in real estate, Stevens was hardly focused on becoming a megabroker. He majored in business at St. Leo College and George Mason University but graduated with little appetite for working in the 9-to-5 world.

“I didn’t see myself, at 21 or 22 years old, reporting to someone, punching a clock, sitting at a desk. I’ve got too much energy,” says Stevens, who, at 55, works out every morning and enjoys outdoor activities such as skiing and hunting. “Plus, my dad had provided a great life for us. I saw that in sales you get paid in direct proportion to the effort you put forth.”

Ironically, Stevens was in sales for only about two years. At 24, he was tapped by the Yeonas Co. to manage the brokerage division. A year later, Shannon & Luchs General Manager Bill Ellis recruited him to open an Alexandria, Va., office. That’s when Stevens learned one of the most important business lessons of his life:

Hire the right people, and give them enough rope. They’ll either succeed or hang themselves. Ellis told Stevens to design, furnish, and manage the new office; never mind that Stevens had little familiarity with the Alexandria area and scant idea about how to open an office. In a few months, Stevens was hosting his first grand opening. Next came offices in Vienna, Annadale, and Reston. Before he left Shannon & Luchs, he’d helped grow the company’s Virginia operation from two offices to 27.

Shannon & Luchs shaped not only Stevens’s management style but also his vision of what he could become. Stevens credits mentor Ellis with teaching him the importance of the three F’s — being firm, fair, and friendly—and with creating a learning environment that set Shannon & Luchs apart. In the late 1970s, Ellis introduced a program called “Achieving Your Potential ,” from the Seattle-based The Pacific Institute, now an NAR partner. Stevens says the program opened his horizons to new possibilities. So it’s not surprising that, in 1993, after helping negotiate the Weichert acquisition, Stevens resigned from Shannon & Luchs. “Weichert’s a great company, but it wasn’t right for me,” he says. “I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew I was going to be successful.”

He confided his decision to Long & Foster Chairman Wes Foster, who asked Stevens to manage half of his Virginia operation. After just four months, though, a new opportunity landed at Stevens’s feet. “Someone from Coldwell Banker contacted me and said, ‘We hear you’re the one to buy our Virginia operation.’” A month later, Stevens was meeting with Foster again, this time to say goodbye. Foster was magnanimous. “He said, ‘You’re foolish if you don’t do it. It’s a phenomenal opportunity.’ We’ve always remained friends,” Stevens says.

Although he couldn’t match Foster’s size, Stevens ran his company with heart, endearing associates and staff with his hard work and egalitarian style. By being forthright, he also engendered loyalty, says Gail Belt, who affiliated with Stevens shortly after he acquired the Coldwell Banker franchise and stayed with the company after the NRT purchase. Stevens realized early on that technology would give his company an edge. He introduced voice mail and e-mail and gave laptops loaded with listing presentations to his top 50 associates. “We created almost an aura around what we were doing,” he says.

Some of Stevens’s technology investments paid off; others didn’t. But he says the experiences were all for the good. As he told association leaders gathered in Chicago in August, “By embracing a culture of change, we had no problem shifting to a different approach when something new and different didn’t work out.”

Calling all REALTORS®

That’s the mindset Stevens brings to the association as it confronts increased federal scrutiny on everything from the commissions real estate practitioners charge to the deduction homeowners take for their mortgage interest payments. Stevens says NAR shouldn’t be afraid of changes that’ll propel the industry forward. At the same time, “we need to have the confidence to say, ‘We’re good, and we’re going to stand up for what we believe in,’” such as the integrity of the MLS and the inviolability of the mortgage interest deduction.

The message can’t just come from NAR leaders, he says. “The issues are bigger and the attacks are greater than they have ever been. We need every member to be heard.”

Stevens says he’d like to see at least 50 percent of members actively engaging in the association — not just contributing to the REALTORS® Political Action Committee but also participating in committees and writing letters to their congressional leaders.

With member support, NAR will overcome its challenges, he says. But the real benefit of greater member involvement, he says, will be to the members themselves. “At the end of the year, it doesn’t matter what they say about Tom Stevens,” he says. “What matters is that there’s a new excitement in the association and more volunteers than ever. That’s what’ll tell me that I succeeded in this role.”

ESSENTIAL STEVENS
Thomas M. Stevens
CRB, CRS®, GRI, was born March 1, 1950, in Washington, D.C.

Business: Stevens, a REALTOR® since 1972, is senior vice president of NRT Inc., Parsippany, N.J., the nation’s largest residential brokerage. In 2002 Stevens sold his company, Coldwell Banker Stevens, based in Vienna, Va., to NRT but stayed on as company president until 2004. Stevens continues to work in Vienna.

Family: Married his wife, Lindy, in 1981. The two had met seven years earlier when both worked at the Yeonas Co. Lindy, a REALTOR® for more than 30 years, has been a partner in a building firm for the past 20 years. The couple’s home is constantly filled with friends and family, including nieces, nephews, and godchildren and their beloved Maine Coon cat, Chubby.

Mentors: “I’ve had two mentors in my life,” Stevens says, “my dad, who taught me about life, and Bill Ellis [former general manager of Shannon & Luchs], who taught me about business.”

Key roles in the REALTOR® organization: 2004 NAR first vice president; 2000 vice president and liaison to government affairs. Stevens has also served on the Executive and Strategic Planning committees and was chair of the Institute Advisory Committee in 2004 and 2005. He has been an NAR director since 1985; in 2001, he served as regional vice president for Delaware, Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. Stevens was president of the Virginia Association of REALTORS® in 1989 and the Northern Virginia Association of REALTORS® in 1985. He is also a longtime director for the huge Metropolitan Regional Information System.

Honors: 1991 Virginia REALTOR of the Year; 1986 Northern Virginia REALTOR® of the Year; 1986 CRB of the Year; 1984 Howard Maddox Leadership Award (NVAR).

Community activities: Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts; Fairfax and Vienna Chambers of Commerce; Northern Virginia Building Industry Association; Cerebral Palsy Campaign of the National Capital Area; Northern Virginia Chapter of the American Cancer Society board; Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance board.

Listen to excerpts from an audio interview with Tom Stevens.