Joel Goodrich riding high in real estate’s hottest market

  • 6c82d 920x920 Joel Goodrich riding high in real estates hottest market


This is how one of the hottest real estate agents in the country’s hottest real estate market works a room: At a big fundraising event, jammed with the bold-face names of San Francisco, Joel Goodrich strides in with the perfect posture of a competitive skater (which he once was), impeccably dressed (as he always is) and, scouting for a friendly face, zeroes in fast.

Flashing a smile worthy of a toothpaste ad, he grabs his subject’s hands, leans in for a two-cheek social kiss, and pulls back to survey her or him with a drawn-out “Hel-lo, darling,” then pays a playful compliment (“Looks like someone’s lost weight — is that new boyfriend keeping you busy?”). In no time, he’s surrounded by friends drawn to his energy and photographers snapping shots that end up in the society pages.

Warm, engaging, upbeat, Goodrich is the ultimate schmoozer, and this social acumen (along with a head for business) has brought him two major accomplishments. First, he has ridden the current real estate boom to rank among the top 10 residential agents in San Francisco in sales volume this year. He represented five listings and 10 buyers totaling $67.5 million as of September, and the homes he sells average $4.5 million in price, putting him at No. 2 for that metric. (Malin Giddings, with an average of $4.8 million per sale, was No. 1 for the period.) Second, he is liked. Well liked. In the agent-eat-agent world that is Bay Area real estate, that is as rare as a $100,000 home in Pacific Heights.

Goodrich is also a performer. His colorful attire sets him apart from more than 4,300 other licensed San Francisco agents happy to pounce on a deal. At San Francisco’s amFAR gala in 2009, he wore a metallic Versace tuxedo jacket; to the opening of the film “Sex and the City 2” in 2010, a pink Marc Jacobs blazer; and to the San Francisco Opera gala last year, a black sequined Chanel dinner jacket and white sequined Versace shirt.

Top-of-line listings

His listings? Even splashier than his apparel. They include the $23.8 million, historic 35,000-square-foot Tobin Clark Estate in Hillsborough, one of the Bay Area’s priciest.

It wasn’t always this way. The 61-year-old Nob Hill resident was once nearly homeless. His riches-to-rags tumble in the 1980s, from a career as a currency trader with a wife and a home in Pacific Heights to joblessness in the Tenderloin, is all but forgotten in the elite circles he frequents today. Instead of being embarrassed about the humbling experience, Goodrich feels enriched by it.

“It fundamentally changed my values and how I looked at my life,” he said. “Before, I had taken my successes for granted. You learn to be grateful — without that, you’ll never be happy no matter how much or how little you have.”

Success has been his watchword since childhood. Goodrich, a Bay Area native, was a competitive ice skater in elementary school. In the 1960s, at age 10, his family moved to France, where he trained with the French national team, developing what he called “an almost obsessive attention to detail and getting things right.” Goodrich placed third at the novice level at national competitions in the U.S. and France. When the family came back to the U.S., he placed fourth at the Pacific Coast junior level.

Goodrich stopped competing when he enrolled at UC Berkeley to study biomedical science. But he missed the ice so much that he dropped out of school to tour with the Ice Follies in Taiwan for six months, and then coached for four years. Back in San Francisco in his 20s, with no degree, he worked as a bank teller, and then became a trader in the foreign currency futures markets. “I got an A-plus in calculus in college,” he recalled. “I loved numbers.”

Fell in love, got married

In the 1980s, at 31, although identifying as gay, Goodrich fell in love with a female singer-songwriter 11 years his junior whom he met at a friend’s pool in Emeryville. Within three years, they’d tied the knot in a black-tie society wedding and moved to an apartment in Pacific Heights. Three brief years later, after “a wonderful life together,” they divorced.

Devastated and unable to focus on work, Goodrich accrued $20,000 in credit card debt, lost his car and moved to a residential hotel in the Tenderloin, or as he put it, to “a different universe,” where he held a $7-an-hour job at the front desk.

“We had divergent interests,” he said of the breakup. Goodrich, rarely at a loss for words, paused with an obvious reluctance to discuss the subject further. “It was painful,” he said. “I was at a low point, a crossroads in my life.”

He didn’t stay down for long.

Two year later, in 1992, he began selling real estate. In his early days at the boutique firm of Evans Pacific Realtors, he sold $100,000 condominiums. By 1999, he was selling million-dollar homes at a firm that was acquired by Coldwell Banker (today Coldwell Banker Previews International).

For decades, he has worked hard to build his brand without tearing others down in the process. He hosts fundraisers to build a base of prospects. His monthly e-newsletters, stuffed with juicy tidbits on market trends, keep him on the radar of his 5,000 contacts around the globe. He’s quoted on market trends in national publications, and has appeared on CNBC- TV’s “Secret Lives of the Super Rich.”

The tech bubble’s 2002 was one of his most profitable years ever. During that decade, he traveled to France with Olivia Hsu Decker, of Decker Bullock Sotheby’s International Realty in Marin, to mingle with high-net worth individuals at Paris Fashion Week and the Cannes Film Festival. He invested in films (2003’s “Latter Days” with Jacqueline Bisset, and 2005’s “Adam and Steve” with Parker Posey), and in 2010, co-created a game called “Fashionista Faceoff” on Facebook.

When the national housing market crash hit San Francisco from 2009 through 2011, his business slowed, and he learned that being a nice guy was not only good for his moral code, but for business, too.

San Francisco’s tight housing inventory causes fierce competition for properties and soaring prices. Real estate firms listing a home earn a 5 percent commission from its sale, split between the agents for buyer and seller. A $5 million home would yield about $250,000 for each side, fees excluded.

With stakes this high, it’s not unheard of for some agents to try to muscle others out of a deal — but they risk being shut out of a lucrative network. About 20 percent of the city’s real estate agents account for 80 percent of sales, by sharing access to information on homes in a private inventory not listed on the open market. Trusted Goodrich is part of that group.

San Francisco high-rise specialist Greg Lynn, ranked by the Wall Street Journal as one of the nation’s top 75 Realtors in sales volume, likened the real estate agent’s role to that of a “warrior, out to make a kill for the client,” to win at any cost.

‘An incredible partner’

“To do a transaction with Joel is to have an incredible partner who wants everybody to win,” Lynn said. “He collaborates better than every other Realtor in San Francisco.”

Goodrich is also discreet, honoring nondisclosure agreements not only because his clients require it, but perhaps because he knows what it’s like to be gossiped about.

Longtime friend Mark Calvano, a Silicon Valley commercial real estate developer, says this quality is uncommon. “Are you kidding me?” he says, with a note of incredulity. “A lot of agents sign the agreement to get the deal, and then it’s a little loose lips here or there, for the prestige. If Joel signs, he would never say, ‘So-and-so is going to be buying this or coming to town.’ I know this because if he’s not telling me, he’s not telling anyone.”

Clients enjoy his diligence, and his patience, including one luxury high-rise owner on Russian Hill, who enlisted Goodrich’s assistance in 2013 and whose apartment was sold this spring. “I worked with him for a few months and decided I was not ready to sell, so we tabled it,” said the owner, who asked not to be named for privacy reasons. “I picked up the phone a year later and said, ‘I’m ready now,’ and within 24 hours, he had buyers willing to pay more than the asking price.”

Lives alone on Nob Hill

Goodrich, who has a boyfriend, lives alone on Nob Hill. He rises at 7 a.m. and turns in at midnight, monitoring his smartphone for fear of losing out on a lead. He starts the day with a super shake made of fruit, soy milk, protein powder and a supplement containing 62 roots, herbs and probiotics. He no longer skates, but exercises by showing 10 to 30 homes a week. He reads the Futurist and Life Extension magazine to stay abreast of trends.

To keep on top of the market, he leverages connections with industry stars, such as New York super broker Dolly Lenz, who has sold more than $8.5 billion of real estate nationally, and Josh Altman of Bravo TV’s “Million Dollar Listing.”

While Goodrich may not have his own TV show (and hasn’t ruled out another career reinvention in the future), there is one thing clients and friends can count on. His collection of showy Pucci, Versace and Cavalli shirts, 58 in all, which helped buoy his spirits while rebuilding his life, are tucked away in his closet in favor of muted, single-breasted suits.

Said the all-business agent, “Versace is not at the top of my list right now.”

Carolyne Zinko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: czinko@sfchronicle.com. Twitter:@carolynezinko

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/style/article/Super-real-estate-agent-Joel-Goodrich-a-super-5864013.php

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