How did you get started in real estate?

DAGER: I'm carrying on the business my father started in 1905. I received my license in 1948 when I was 21. But my father never really encouraged me to get into the business. Right after World War II, the market was very depressed. I would have been a guidance counselor's worst nightmare. I had already sailed the world with the Merchant Marine Academy, then I started studying business administration at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania, and then I enrolled in the Philadelphia Textile Institute, which my friend encouraged me to do since his father owned a linen mill. I worked in the textile industry in New York City for two years and worked in real estate near Philadelphia on the weekends. But I didn't like New York very much. I'm a country boy at heart. So in 1956, I got my broker's license and started working with my father full-time.

What were your early years in the business like? 

DAGER: I took appraisal courses, and soon developed a specialty doing appraisals related to government condemnations. I represented property owners when new highways and sewers came through. Until about 1990, brokers in Pennsylvania could do full appraisals. My father died in 1959, but I felt blessed that he had such an excellent reputation all through his career. He had provided counsel to the Pennsylvania legislature when it wrote the state licensing law. His reputation washed off on me. The name was extremely beneficial.

What changes did you make to the brokerage? 

DAGER: We grew very slowly. We had about five sales agents in the mid-1950s and reached a high point of about 30 in the mid-1980s. I opened a second office in 1988. We were always an across-the-board kind of business. We handle residential sales, as well as commercial and land sales. I did a lot of appraisals, along with three or four associate brokers. My philosophy was that the best appraisers had experience in the marketplace.

It must be hard to read about the damaging role that fraudulent appraisals have played over the past few years. 

DAGER: It's been extremely disappointing. The morality of the appraisal field was compromised starting in the 1990s. Banks put a lot pressure on appraisers to hit certain numbers. Meanwhile, the thinking of buyers and sellers about the value of a home can vary greatly. There's no question that appraising real estate is not an exact science. But valuations grew way out of proportion. We need appraisers with the stamina to resist these pressures. We need to have morality back in the process. But nowadays it can be impossible to determine what value really is. Nobody knows where the bottom of the market is, and values that you assign one day can be out of date the next day because of all the distressed properties and foreclosures.

What was your toughest time in the business? 

DAGER: I've been through many depressed markets, but things were never totally dead. You had to find unique ways of selling properties like offering lease-purchase agreements. In the early 1980s, interest rates reached 18 percent. We thought it was great when someone found a loan for 16 percent. People adjusted by compromising on the size of the home they bought. In our business, we had it a little easier because we were a small company and could deal with the blows more easily. Some of our sales associates put their licenses in escrow, and then came back when things got better. We had the ability to remain flexible and control our expenses. We operated as a cash-in, cash-out basis. We did have a line of credit, but I only used it because we had a sale on the horizon that could carry that debt. I always tried to have pending sales that were sufficient to carry whatever I was getting into in terms of debt. Often as business grew, brokers wanted bigger and fancier offices. That was never my desire.

How else did you cope with downturns? 

DAGER: We offered a menu of things with the idea that not all would go dead at the same time. That turned out to be true. When we had setbacks, such as a land sale falling through, you looked at it as an experience, and tried to avoid the same trap next time.

Your wife Sharon is also your business partner. What’s it like to work with your spouse?

DAGER: We got along well because she specialized in residential resale, and I worked more with builders. We didn’t get in each other's way. But owning a business together also meant that the work day never really ended for us.

What advice can you offer struggling colleagues? 

DAGER: It's best to stick to the basics. The more you can educate yourself in whatever field you're interested in, the better. It's also useful to get out in the community and do service work to show your concern for the general public. Real estate is not just about your ability to make a buck. I was active in the Rotary organization as a president of my local club and district governor. I also served eight years on the borough council and another eight years in state government as a representative in the Pennsylvania Legislature.

How did you juggle your duties at your brokerage with your position as a state representative? 

DAGER: It was difficult at times to do both. What mattered was having good, supportive people in the real estate office. But it was also clear that greater exposure in the community was good for business. When people feel like you're interested in the community, it opens up your sphere of influence. I was a member of the legislature's professional licensing committee and spent a fair amount of time convincing people, especially in rural areas, about the value of a real estate license. Some of them came from rural areas where farmers wanted to sell back and forth to each other. I also helped revise the state planning code as it pertained to the construction of sewer facilities and other public works.

Your daughter just got into the real estate business in Maryland. Would you say this is a good time to enter the profession?

DAGER: It is extremely tough now. You've got to have a good reason to feel you'd be successful, in terms of your qualifications, sphere of influence, and your ability to get people to refer business to you. With those things in place, you can get in and be successful. My daughter is with a very small office, with a broker who gives her a lot of referrals. They are very busy.

Where do you think things are heading with real estate and the economy? 

DAGER: I've lived through many ups and downs, and I know that things will get better. In our office, inquiries from buyers are up compared with a few months ago. Things will improve slowly until we get back to a more traditional market. Mortgages will be given to people who qualify for them and home values will stabilize. The new home buyer tax credit should help, but I don't think we'll see an immediate bump. People are afraid. Even those who have jobs are worried about the security of those jobs. We need to see increased confidence in our financial institutions, which will help the real estate market along with the overall economy.

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