Comeback Kid : Real Estate Prodigy Glickman Crashed, but He’s on the Rise
His open house is to begin at 11 a.m. But Mike Glickman is off showing another home to a “hot buyer,” so he calls in an emergency replacement--his mother.
Harriet Glickman hurries over to greet the trickle of real estate agents and curious neighbors who stop by to view her son’s new listing in Encino, a four-bedroom traditional house on Valley Vista Boulevard, asking price $899,000.
“They’ve got it all baby-proofed,” she quickly points out when a young woman walks through the door towing a 1-year-old boy. But the woman brushes off any sales talk. “Just looking,” she says.
Finally, Glickman’s son bounds in and declares: “This house is definitely going to be sold!”
Still, for the onetime whiz kid of San Fernando Valley real estate, sitting at a open house is quite a comedown from the days when he led an army of 1,800 agents before age 30 and came to personify the booming California housing market.
Soon after he expanded into the lucrative turf of Westside real estate, the market crashed, and in June, 1990, so did Mike Glickman Realty. Now Glickman, 31, works for a former competitor, Jon Douglas Co., seeking listings and searching for buyers just like any other agent.
But while real estate sales remain sluggish and prices in some cases continue to fall, times are tough for the flamboyant Glickman only in comparison to his past heights.
Working with two associates, he recorded 97 sales in 1991, placing him “easily in the top 10” of all agents in the vast Douglas Co., a firm executive said. When more than 1,000 Douglas agents from 35 California offices gathered in Los Angeles last week for a companywide “Kick Off ‘92,” a featured event was a motivational seminar by Glickman. He told how he rebounded “from crashing defeat to soaring success” in the year and a half since he fell into personal and corporate bankruptcy.
By 15, while a student at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, Glickman distributed flyers for any realtor who would pay him. By 18, he was a full-time agent. By 23, he opened his own firm with his cousin and another partner, then snared agents from other companies by promising them a higher share of commissions.
Promotion was his trademark. He distributed pumpkins at Halloween, offered trips to Las Vegas as door prizes at open houses and arranged private trash removal in a community when there was a garbage strike. He also enraged the real estate Establishment by allowing agents to offer homeowners reductions on the customary 6% commissions to get listings.
With his longish curly hair and open-collar silk shirts, Glickman’s image was a sharp contrast to the buttoned-down look of Los Angeles’ reigning realty kingpins, Douglas and Fred Sands.
Rivals, disparaging his “K mart of real estate,” did not shed many tears when an overextended Glickman could not keep up lease payments on his offices and was forced into bankruptcy.
“I made mistakes,” he says. “I should never have gone to the Westside. I should have stayed in the Valley. If I had, we’d still be in business.”
But he does not dwell on reliving “the days of Mike Glickman Realty.”
The open house on Valley Vista this day, a Friday, is a reminder of the realities of his trade in the midst of a recession.
Glickman picked up the listing after another agent held it for six months and could not sell the house, even though it is near Encino’s fashionable Royal Oaks neighborhood and is replete with high-end touches, including bleached beams and a split-level swimming pool and spa in the back yard.
The house went on the market at $995,000, then was reduced to $969,000. At Glickman’s recommendation, it was lowered to $899,000. When commissions are figured in, the owners will take a loss even if it sells at close to that price.
Still, Glickman is convinced that the new price will attract buyers. “The first 30 days are key,” he says.
His optimism is bolstered by the arrival of Rosalie Simon-Friedman, a stylish Fred Sands agent who announces that she has clients--the man is a doctor--who would love the “Connecticut charm” of the house. She’s going to bring them by Saturday.
At noon, several other brokers wander in.
Glickman greets Phyllis Zangwill as “the $4-million woman” because of a listing she has in Chatsworth, a 12,000-square-foot home with 10 fireplaces and 10 bathrooms.
“It’s reduced to $3.75 (million),” says Zangwill, who used to work for Glickman, then moved with him to Jon Douglas, “but I have a second showing.”
Zangwill also has a client who might be interested in the Valley Vista house. It’s another physician--the best customer you could have these days, the assembled agents agree.
“Two years ago, the lawyers were the ones you wanted,” Zangwill says. “Now they can’t make partner.”
While a Friday open house is primarily for agents, a few home shoppers and browsers--”looky-loos”--stop by as well. But none seems a serious prospect.
One woman shows her tiny son the dog out back. “See the doggie. He’s sleeping. Night night,” she tells him.
Another woman, in her 50s, comes in with an agent and says she is looking for “a cozy little country cottage.” When she tours the house, however, she’s put off by the modest-sized bathrooms--her husband wants a huge one.
Next through the door is Ben Eisner, another Douglas agent who once worked for Glickman. Eisner’s concern at the moment is not the Valley Vista home, but a client who “really wants” a $3-million house around the corner. Negotiations with the seller have broken down. “They’re $65,000 apart,” he reports.
Glickman perks up. “I have a new listing for $3 million you just have to see,” he says.
“Is it up a driveway?”
“Yes.”
Eisner shakes his head. Mansion or not, the client “wants to be able to play ball in the street with his kid.”
For many agents, one multimillion-dollar sale can make a year--or a reputation. Along those lines, Glickman boasts he was involved in the biggest sales on the Valley’s prime hills for the past two years.
In 1991, he was selling agent for a $3-million-plus Royal Oaks mansion with a racquetball court, two guest houses, a koi pond and a beauty salon.
The year before, the big numbers were brought in by the pink 10,000-square-foot dream house he built for himself in Encino, only to lose it in federal Bankruptcy Court proceedings. Ever upbeat, Glickman takes pride that it eventually sold for $3,050,000--$650,000 more than the initial bid.
The profit provided much of the $2 million in assets being held by the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee, who hopes to distribute the funds this year to settle some of the $9.3 million in claims against him.
In the corporate bankruptcy case, also expected to be settled this year, there are $20 million in debts and only $1 million in assets, according to the trustee.
Although he lost his Encino mansion, Glickman kept his more modest Malibu residence.
Image, of course, is crucial in a field where you’re always selling yourself. Last week, Glickman picked up his new Mercedes. And last month, he used a client’s Encino home for the type of grand Christmas party that marked his reign as king of Valley real estate. Some 1,200 agents were invited to enjoy refreshments, music and door prizes.
