For Some Realtors, Teamwork Pays : Partnering: With higher prices, more listings and demand for services, it pays more agents to split the work.

A doctor and his wife had filed for divorce, but continued to live in their Beverly Hills mansion, the wife in one wing, the husband in the other, while the house was up for sale.

Listing agent Bobbie McCall of Alvarez, Hyland & Young, who got along better with the wife, recalled, “If I got lucky and the husband wasn’t there, I could show the whole house, but if he was there, I could only show her side.”

McCall tried to get the estranged couple to reach a compromise, but they wouldn’t talk to each other. “I was caught in the middle,” McCall said, so she turned for help to her “partner” in the office, September Kimble.

“It was easier for me to work with the husband,” Kimble recalled. “So I showed his side of the house and Bobbie showed the wife’s.”

When an offer came in, Kimble went to one restaurant for the doctor’s signature, while McCall went to another restaurant for the wife’s. “And we made the deal,” Kimble said.

For partners Kimble and McCall, who have worked together for the past eight years on 80% of their transactions, this was another example of “partnering” paying off.

Partnering, the teaming up of two or more agents or brokers, is a growing phenomenon in the residential real estate business of Southern California, particularly in the high-end markets.

Among the reasons:

--With a slowdown of the market, there are more listings to be serviced.

--Sellers, especially of luxury homes, are demanding more service.

--An increased number of real estate documents and threatened lawsuits have made it difficult for an individual realtor to handle the workload.

--Escalating crime has made it unsafe to be on some streets alone at night, some women agents point out.

But perhaps the most important reason that partnering has increased sharply in recent years is that high Southland prices have made commission splits more feasible.

There are two types of partnering.

One is the classic variety. Partners do most or all of their business together, pooling work and dividing profits 50/50, like Debra Berman and Pat Kandel, who sold $50 million in homes last year at Jon Douglas Co.’s Marina del Rey office.

The other is a joint-venture type arrangement in which partners team up on a deal-by-deal basis, like Joyce Rey, who has, by her own count, nearly 10 partners on separate 50/50 deals at any given time. Rey is co-founder and general manager of Rodeo Realty in Beverly Hills, which only handles $1-million-and-more homes.

Commissions on the sale of such houses are big enough for each partner to take home a sizable sum. A top agent who is a 50/50 listing partner would make, for example, about $35,000 on a $4-million deal.

The full commission probably would be 5%, or $200,000, and that would be divided 50/50 between selling and listing agents. Of their $100,000, the listing partners would get 70%, or $35,000 each, and the listing brokerage firm would get 30% for phone, advertising and other expenses. Real estate companies generally get 50% from agents who are not top producers.

But even a top producer selling nothing but expensive homes could fail when it comes to partnering, because there are other factors besides high prices and commissions that make it work.

A big factor is volume. Because the commission is split, the sales and listings volume of each partner should be as high or higher than it was before the partnership was formed, said Perry Cross, who has been partnering for 10 years with his wife, Anne, at Jon Douglas Co.’s Studio City office.

Michael Alley, who has partnered with Patty Chiarodit at Ramsey-Shilling in Toluca Lake for three years, said, “Because we’re partners, we have to double our efforts.”

Berman and Kandel each came into their partnership five years ago with 15 listings, and since then, they’ve maintained an average of 30.

“Our income has definitely increased because of partnering,” Kandel said, “but I don’t think partnering is for everybody.”

As Jack Sammons of Fred Sands Realtors, Sherman Oaks, explained it, “I had a partner for three years, but I fired her, because I was doing all the work.”

Another drawback: “You can lose your identity,” Kandel said.

She and her partner heavily promote the entity Berman-Kandel, and clients often mistake one of them for the other. But it amused them when they got some correspondence addressed to Mr. Berman Kandel.

“Traditionally, brokers felt partnerships were not a successful pattern,” said Jon Douglas Co. General Manager Lou Piatt, “because we thought of them as two people trying to cut down on effort by sharing the work, so the productivity of one would be divided by two.

“But we have several extraordinary partnerships now where people . . . are far more successful than they were individually. Success has to do with the chemistry of the relationship and the commitment.”

Berman and Kandel stress this in seminars that they give regularly. They spoke at the National Assn. of Realtors convention in Dallas in November and before a group of 1,000 real estate agents in San Francisco last May.

“Partnering is definitely a trend,” Kandel said. “There is a lot of interest in it.”

“But a lot of people partner for the wrong reasons,” Berman added. “Some just want to take more time off.”

A partner can take off more time without worries, knowing that there is another agent or broker who is just as involved in a deal, Kandel said, “but both partners must be willing to work equally hard and do such unglamorous jobs as putting up “For Sale” signs and knocking on doors.

“And a partner shouldn’t be brand-new to the business,” said Kandel, who had sold homes for 11 years before teaming with Berman, who was equally experienced. “People should be able to hold their own without using a partner as a crutch.”

But, ironically, that’s how the idea began.

Partnering started in the late 1960s with a summer program for junior brokers at Coldwell Banker Commercial Real Estate in Los Angeles, said Jay Haskell, who worked for Coldwell Banker at the time but is now president of the Seeley Co.

The program placed a junior broker, called “a rookie” or “a runner,” under the tutelage of a senior broker. After a year of training, the rookie could earn commissions, splitting them with the senior broker. Until then, the rookie was paid a minimum salary.

Ron Rader, executive vice president of the Klabin Co., an Inglewood-based commercial real estate firm, said, “The first time I was a partner on a transaction was with a senior broker in our office. I did all the grunt work like ordering signs and mailers, but when it came down to the fine points of the deal, the senior partner negotiated it.

“We called it an 80/20/50 split; I did 80% of the work, he did 20%, and we split the commission 50/50, but I wouldn’t have had access to such a big deal without the senior partner.”

The same process goes on in residential real estate offices, where partnering began as a “mentor program” years after it started in commercial real estate.

Cecelia Waeschle of Rodeo Realty in Beverly Hills said, “When I first got my real estate license in 1980, I gave up half of any commissions I would earn to work in a mentor program in Beverly Hills, but I got incredible training.”

In a recent deal as a partner with Joyce Rey, Waeschle proved true one of the lessons she learned in that training. It was, she said, that “there is no free ride in partnering: If you don’t get the client, you must put in the hours.”

By going into the office on Labor Day, Waeschle found a house for some buyers whom Rey had obtained as clients. “Partners should be willing to go the extra mile,” Waeschle said.

Pasadena realtor Jane Caughey, who has been partnering for nearly five years with Kelly Brock at Podley, Caughey & Done, agreed.

“I couldn’t do nearly as much business on my own as with a partner, because we’re both willing to go the extra mile,” she said, “and with so many listings now, four legs are better than two.”

With a slowdown in the market, there has been an increase in listings and a longer period for homes to sell, resulting in a greater demand for service.

Rick Merrill, regional president of the Prudential California Realty, cited the “buildup of inventory” as a reason for the growth of partnering, which he claims is more common in high-priced areas of Southern California than anywhere else in the country.

“The closer you get to Brentwood, Bel-Air and Beverly Hills, the more partnering you see,” he said, estimating that 30% to 50% of the deals in those communities are partnered.

The higher the selling price, the more practical it is to split the commission, noted several partners, though some--like Darlene Todorvich and Margaret Hathaway at Century 21/The Lidle Co. in Covina--sell some homes priced at $100,000.

Most Southland home prices are well above the national average, however, and that is why competition among realtors here is keen.

“Because of the prices, agents go into listings with as much talent as possible,” Merrill said. “A high producer will team with a superstar agent because the high producer realizes that the competition also includes a superstar.

“But another factor is that some of our better agents are so busy that they will partner to spread the work around. With more listings, our best agents are busier satisfying customers than before. For the past 18 months, listings weren’t on the market that long, so the amount of service was less.”

Sellers of high-priced homes expect more service anyway, said James R. Gary, owner/broker of a Woodland Hills-based realty firm who does joint-venture deals with two partners.

“A movie or TV executive in Calabasas Park is going to expect an agent to provide services that are more commensurate with the price of his property. So the agent is going to do a whole lot more for his money, like hold more open houses and do more advertising,” he explained.

Listing agents of luxury houses, from the San Fernando Valley to San Marino to Tustin, are expected to be present for every showing, he said, “and oftentimes, this requirement is put into writing.”

The listing agent’s presence is required, high-end realtors say, to demonstrate features, be a buffer between the seller and potential buyer and/or buyer’s agent, protect valuables and prepare the house for showings.

“You can’t just let a potential buyer’s agent loose in a 10,000-square-foot house,” Gary remarked.

It took him an hour every time he prepared to show a $3-million Calabasas house, which was about that size. “I would prepare the staff, open the drapes, turn on the lights and fountains,” he said.

Gary also says that partners can help each other process the many real estate documents. “Over the past 10 years, we’ve seen an exponential increase in paper work with every sale,” he said.

Pat Hug of the George Elkins Co. in Newport Beach agreed: “The amount of paper work needed to put together a deal is 95% greater than it was when I left real estate in 1982. That’s one reason I got together with Linda.”

Impressed with Hug’s energy and experience, Linda Taglianetti, a 13-year veteran in selling houses, persuaded Hug to leave retirement four months ago to become a 50/50 partner, though Hug had worked mainly on her own for 25 years.

“I don’t like details,” Hug said. “I like negotiating and showing, but Linda is like an attorney. She knows the documents inside and out.” In these litigious times, Hug conceded, she is more confident having Taglianetti as a partner.

“It is also safer to have a partner if you have to go out at night,” said Covina agent Margaret Hathaway, who has teamed with Darlene Todorvich for five years. “I think there are more partners now because of the safety factor.”

Beverly Hills agent Bobbie McCall remembers waiting until 2 a.m. for a client to get back from a party to sign a deal. “I wouldn’t want to do that alone,” she said.

Debra Berman recalls completing three transactions one night, with the last appointment starting at 10 p.m. “Partnering made it so much easier,” she said. “We called our husbands, and they felt . . . we were safe because we were together.”

“There are some scary times when I’m glad to have my partner with me,” said Nadine Bartholomew, who teams with Nancy Short at Turner & Associates in Laguna Beach. “Like today, when we knocked on a door (for a listing) and this kooky fellow invited us in. I’d never knock on a door alone.”

Bartholomew and Short have been partners for 18 months, but they have been friends for 15 years.

Alice Helm and Virginia Johnson, who work at Mike Glickman Realty in Sherman Oaks, also have been friends longer than they’ve been partners, and they have much in common. Both are mothers with several grown children.

Helm and Johnson also have differences, however, which they have learned to use to their advantage in partnering.

“Everybody loves Virginia,” Helm said of her partner of 12 years. “She’s sort of a mother image. So when there is something tough to do, like reduce a client’s price, I have to do it.”

“Alice is good at that,” Johnson observed.

When Bartholomew and Short go to get a listing together, they see “who relates better with the client,” Bartholomew said. “Inevitably, one of us gets along better, so the client has a choice.” Clients then work more with one of the partners than the other.

As Sandy Khadar of Hanu Reddy in Irvine, who isn’t partnering now but did for three years, explained: “If you don’t have a personality that fits a client, you can have the client work with the other partner.”

Danny Bibb, who works on a deal-by-deal basis with Stefanie Grody or Stella Shirar at Grubb & Ellis in Newport Beach, said, “With us you have a choice of working with a man or a woman, and that’s ideal, because males and females may have different perspectives.”

“Some clients relate better to a man, others to a woman,” said Joe Babajian, who has joint-venture partnered with Judy Cycon for nine years at Fred Sands Estates in Beverly Hills.

“Kathleen’s strengths are my weaknesses,” is the way Dorothy St. Amour described her 14-year partnership with her sister, Kathleen Van Sant-Fisher of Rancho Santa Fe Properties in San Diego County.

“But we approach business the same way,” Van Sant-Fisher quickly added. “We both enjoy working hard, we’re enthusiastic and have a sense of fair play.”

Pasadena realtor Kaughey said, “Partners, especially those who split the work and profits 50/50, need to be simpatico in their approach.”

And they often think alike, said Rose Borne, who has been a 50/50 partner with Marilyn Nelson for five years at Stan Herman & Associates in Beverly Hills.