| Issue #40, January 12, 2007 |
Who's Here
Harald Grant
Real Estate Agent
By Debbie Tuma
In 2001, Harald Grant had achieved his goal of being the top earning real estate agent in his company, Sotheby’s International Realty in Southampton. Although this motivated him to work even harder, he never imagined that in 2005, he would be ranked the number one real estate agent in the country.
Grant, of Southampton, was even surprised himself when he recently learned about this ranking, which was a joint research effort by The Wall Street Journal and the publishing firm Real Trends Inc., based in Denver, Colorado which provides information and analysis on the residential brokerage industry. Listing the names and sales figures of the top 200 real estate agents, based on a survey of over 7,000 realty firms, realtor associations, training and education groups, and national networks, they ranked Grant Number 1.
Grant, 55, reported his 2005 sales totaled nearly $245 million, which is about $37 million more than the second place agent from the San Francisco region. He said although he knew his sales figures were “good” for 2005, he never considered being first in the whole nation. “I considered myself in the top 10 percent of the brokers in the country, but I was truly amazed to learn that I ranked number one,” he said last Sunday, while visiting Sotheby’s East Hampton office. “I know the other brokers in the top 10 percent are also smart, work hard and have connections, so I feel that my achieving this number one slot has a lot to do with luck. I think 2005 was a lucky year for me, when everything just happened to fall into place.”
A self-confirmed “workaholic,” who was born in Norway and raised in Brooklyn and New Jersey, Grant said he was humbled” to reach this level and gave some reasons when asked his secrets of the success. “To begin with, I don’t treat anyone differently, whether they’re spending $100,000, or $40 million, for a house,” he said. “I don’t play favorites and I try to do just as good a job for them all, because you never know who will recommend you to the next person, and almost all my clients come from word of mouth,” he explained. “I’ve also handled everything myself in my business rather than relying on assistants to help me. When people call me — and I sometimes get 50 a day — I always take the time to call them back.”
Grant starts his day at about 6 a.m., since lots of his clients start trading in Europe at that hour and he is still returning calls until seven or eight o’clock at night. Although he used to work five days a week, he sees the difference in putting in seven full days per week. “No, I don’t really take many days off, because in this business, when people need to reach you, they expect you to call them back and show them houses,” he said. “The loyalty in my business is fickle — they want to look when they want to look. But I get off on people calling me and wanting to look.” This was evidenced by the number of calls he got just during this interview. “Hi — this is Harald, I’ll call you back.”
He said he also enjoys working with people at the top level of their industries, whether it’s music, movies, or business. “These people want immediate answers when they get in the car and they want a broker who’s done his homework. These people know that with me, they don’t need another broker and there is a comfort level there. I overwork the market — I give my clients so much information on their properties and show them 30-40 homes.” Grant said the keys to his real estate success are “product knowledge, good listening skills, and honesty.”
Grant, who is divorced, and has a 16 year-old son who is a top-ranked tennis player in the Northeast, said he knows his devotion to his job, and his long hours, have taken a toll on not only his former marriage, but in his relationships with women today as well. “In my life, my work comes first, then my son, and then my relationships,” he said. “I try to spend as much time with my son, who lives in Nassau County, as I can, and although I only take about one week off a year, I spend it with him.”
He knows first-hand how hard it is for a busy and successful father to also be there with his family. He also attributes much of his success to his own father, who taught him the value of hard work, ambition, and determination. His father, of Porsgrun, Norway, started out net fishing for salmon and mackerel in the fjords of Norway, and then moved his family to Brooklyn when Grant was seven. Since Grant’s father was also a fine carpenter, he started his own business, in the Norwegian section of Bay Ridge. When Grant was in high school, his family moved to Livingston, New Jersey.
“Growing up in Norway under socialism, my father felt he couldn’t get ahead, since there was a limit on what you could make without getting heavily taxed,” he said. “My father was very ambitious and he knew in America, he could fulfill his dream of having his own construction company.”
As a child growing up in Norway, Grant’s life was “all about winter sports”—from cross-country to alpine skiing, to skating and sledding. “We skied to school from the age of kindergarten,” he recalled. “In high school, I also played lots of sports, and I considered going into professional skiing or football as a career.” But after majoring in political science and history at the University of Vermont, where he was also on the ski team, Grant decided to move to Vail, Colorado, where he met an IBM executive who convinced him to join his company to sell computers. Grant moved to Philadelphia, where he got promoted by IBM, and then moved to Dallas, Texas for three years.
“At that time, my father’s construction business had grown so much in New Jersey, that he asked me to take it over, and I left IBM to run his company from 1979-1986,” he said. “We had a contract to renovate the interiors of all the Bamberger Stores.”
During that time, Grant met and married his wife, who had a large horse farm in Mattituck, and they sold the family business and eventually moved out to the North Fork. Their son, Bruce, now lives with his mother in Nassau County. In 1987, Grant joined Sotheby’s International Realty’s Southampton office, and he eventually moved to this location.
“I would say that I credit my parents for everything I’ve achieved in business,” said Grant. “We grew up in a close-knit, conventional family, who ate dinner together every night, went to church together, and who had a lot of communication. We had good, old-fashioned family values, including a strong work ethic. We were always taught if we wanted something, we had to work for it. My brother is a successful real estate developer in Norway, who owns ski hotels and buildings in Denver.”
This explains Grant’s positive outlook on work. “If you love what you do, it’s not hard work,” he said, picking up another call for houses. “I love getting up in the morning and going to work. When that stops, it will be time to look elsewhere. Now I’ve gotta go.”
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