THE DEVELOPMENT OF ORGANIZED REAL ESTATE IN SAN FRANCISCO
Under all is the land.” So begins the
preamble to the Code of Ethics of
the National Association of
REALTORS®. But where was the
land? In 1905, if you were offered
an attractive deal by a sharp real estate operator
in San Francisco, a so-called “curbstoner” because
they stood out front of the offices of reputable real
estate agents attempting to snag unsuspecting
buyers before they entered, the phrase caveat
emptor should have been uppermost in your mind!
Real estate in San Francisco had proved, by
1905, to be a valuable investment. Despite
numerous major fires (no less than six between
1849 and 1851) and frequent recorded earthquakes,
the city had experienced significant
population growth. This meant that the acquisition,
subdivision, and development of parcels of
land in the city had been a profitable venture for
many.
Reputable agents had long tried to establish an
orderly market in San Francisco for real estate
investment. They offered a full range of brokerage
services to buyers and sellers, and management
services to owners of property. They published
notices of sales and summaries of activity regularly
and accurately. But effort was clearly needed to
promulgate standards to protect the public from
unscrupulous opportunists. There were no established
commission rates for selling real estate, no
generally accepted leasing rate, nor any uniform
schedule of fees for the collection of rents. A
code of ethics was needed for the industry, along
with a tribunal with powers to enforce it.
Elsewhere in California, groups of real estate
dealers had established local organizations. The
first reported Real Estate Board in the state was
formed in San Diego in 1878, although that was
dissolved in 1886, to be re-formed in 1887.
Another association of real estate agents was
formed in San Jose in 1896. The Berkeley Realty
Board was founded in 1902, and the Los Angeles
Realty Board in 1903. A preliminary meeting to
develop the idea of forming a wider association
had been held in San Francisco on April 7, 1902,
which resulted in the idea of a California Real
Estate Board to serve the counties north of the
Tehachapi Mountains. But no record exists of
any progress made by that fledgling organization.
FORMATION OF THE SAN
FRANCISCO REAL ESTATE BOARD
By 1905, the time was ripe for the creation of a
San Francisco Real Estate Board. A feeling of
buoyant optimism was in the air that year.
According to the Real Estate Circular, which
4
THE DEVELOPMENT OF
ORGANIZED REAL ESTATE
IN SAN FRANCISCO
By David Parry
“
Thomas Magee & Sons had published annually
since 1866, sales of San Francisco real estate
ended 1905 at a record level of $74,926,065, a figure
which was not to be exceeded until 1920.
President Theodore Roosevelt had committed the
nation to building the Panama Canal, and there
was talk of mounting a World’s Fair in San
Francisco in 1915 to celebrate its opening. By the
1904 initiative of Mayor James D. Phelan, through
the Association for the Improvement and
Adornment of San Francisco, Daniel H.
Burnham, the prominent Chicago architect and
town planner, had been invited to develop a plan
for the city incorporating new boulevards, parks,
and a civic center. His associate, Edward
Bennett, was hard at work in a house on Twin
Peaks implementing Burnham’s vision, and a
report was expected to be published in 1905.
With encouragement from the Chamber of
Commerce, a group of San Francisco brokers met
twice in the Assembly Hall of the Mills Building
at 220 Montgomery Street, on the afternoons of
Monday, February 6, and Thursday, February 16,
1905. The result of the second meeting was
reported in the Call-Bulletin and the Examiner the
next day.
The oldest established companies in the city
were involved—Madison & Burke had been
formed in 1858, Thomas Magee & Sons in 1866,
Baldwin & Howell in 1885. As reported in the
Examiner, the first elected president of the San
Francisco Real Estate Board was Josiah R. Howell,
one of the principals in Baldwin and Howell.
Howell was to remain president for two years,
through 1906.
5
Real estate dealers from all over California assembled at the formation of the California State Realty Federation
in Los Angeles, May 1905. First President Francis Ferrier is in the front of the group.
Photo reprinted from California Real Estate Magazine, June 1942.
FORMATION OF THE
CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION
Three months after the creation
of the San Francisco Real Estate
Board, a group of almost 100
real estate dealers from all over
the state met at the Chamber of
Commerce on Broadway in Los
Angeles, on May 27, 1905. The
meeting resulted in the creation
of the California State Realty
Federation, to be renamed the
California Real Estate Association
(CREA) in 1917, and the California Association
of REALTORS® (CAR) in 1975. The first president
of the California State Realty Federation
was Francis Ferrier, a native of Ontario, Canada,
who was also President of the Board of Trustees
of Berkeley from 1903 to 1909, an office which
was the equivalent of Mayor. Ferrier had been
instrumental in the founding of the Berkeley
Realty Board in 1902. San Francisco’s Josiah R.
Howell succeeded to the presidency of the
California Real Estate Federation in 1907, the
first of nine San Franciscans who will have led
the state association by 2006.
6
SAN FRANCISCO PRESIDENTS OF
THE CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION
1907 Josiah R. Howell
1911 Mabry McMahan
1927 Harry B. Allen
1935 Charles W. Brock
1943 Walter P. Laufenberg
1951 Willard L. Johnson
1957 J. Mortimer Clark
1961 Kenneth H. Smitten
2006 Vincent E. Malta*
* Malta is CAR President-Elect in 2005.
REAL ESTATE MEN
ORGANIZE A BOARD
--------------
First Measure Adopted by Body Is
Memorial to the Legislature in Opposition
to the Stanton Oral Contract Bill.
--------------
The local real estate dealers met yesterday afternoon in
the assembly hall of the Mills building and organized
what will be known as “The San Francisco Real Estate
Board.”
A set of by-laws was adopted providing for two classes
of membership, one an active class, to embrace all
active real estate agents and brokers, and the other an
associate-member class, intended to include property
owners and those interested in real estate in this city and
who are not engaged in the brokerage business. The
following well known firms enrolled themselves as
members at the initial meeting:
Madison & Burke, Thomas Magee & Sons, Bovee,
Toy & Co., G. H. Umbsen & Co., Baldwin & Howell,
Shainwald, Buckbee & Co., Von Rhein Real Estate Co.,
Davidson & Leigh, B. P. Oliver, David Stern & Sons, O.
D. Baldwin & Son, Hooker & Lent, A. J. Rich & Co.,
Boardman Bros. & Co., Lyon & Hoag, David Bush &
Son, Center & Spader, Speck & Co., W. H. Crim & Co.,
Hawks & Skelton, McEwen Bros., Sonntag Bros., A. E.
Buckingham, William Cranston Co., Hoag & Lansdale,
Burnham & Marsh Co., Baldwin & Stetson, George A.
Raymond, B. M. Gunn & Co., C. M. Wooster & Co.
A board of directors of nine members, consisting of
John T. Harmes, Frederick Magee, George D. Toy, H. P.
Umbsen. J. R. Howell, Samuel G. Buckbee, David Rich,
E. L. Hoag and C. M. Wooster was elected and this board
met immediately after the adjournment of the general
meeting and organized by electing J. R. Howell president,
John T. Harmes vice-president, and Samuel G. Buckbee
treasurer. B. L. Cadwalader, the secretary of the Chamber
of Commerce, was elected permanent secretary of the
organization, which will have its headquarters and hold
its meetings at the rooms of the Chamber of Commerce.
The organization is intended to promote the welfare of
the real estate men of San Francisco, to watch all legislation
affecting property rights, landlords and tenants, all
municipal ordinances concerning buildings, and, in fact,
all matters of general interest to the property owners of
this city, as well as any State legislation of the same character.
The first measure adopted by the organization was the
passage of a resolution in opposition to the Stanton Oral
Contract Bill, now before the Senate in Sacramento.
San Francisco Examiner, Friday, February 17, 1905
FORMATION OF THE
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
At a harmonious meeting of 825 real estate
dealers from 19 different states held in Nashville,
Tennessee, in February 1891, an organization
called the National Real Estate Association
was formed. Benjamin Weil of Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, was elected as its first President.
Thomas T. Wright of Nashville was later honored
in resolutions as the originator of the idea of creating
a national association. A large delegation
from Buffalo, New York, secured the next meeting
for their city. The meeting was held in October
1892, attracting 1,500 dealers from over 30 states.
A new President was elected, W. B. Cutler of
Buffalo, and the group agreed to meet again during
the World’s Columbian Exposition in
Chicago in the summer of 1893. That meeting
was billed as a “World’s Real Estate Dealers
Congress” and reportedly drew several thousand
real estate men, mainly from the United States,
with a few from foreign countries. No new officers
were elected, those from nine months prior
being held over until the following year for a
meeting delegated to a committee that unfortunately
never acted. Federal mismanagement of
the nation’s gold reserves triggered a financial
panic in 1893 which led to an economic depression
that lasted through 1896. A quarter of the
nation’s railroads went under, 500 banks failed,
16,000 businesses declared bankruptcy, and 25
percent of the industrial work force was thrown
into unemployment. The real estate industry
could not escape the depression and the National
Real Estate Association failed to survive.
The idea of a national association was taken up
again in 1907 by members of the Chicago, St.
Louis, Duluth, St. Paul, and Minneapolis Boards.
Invitations were mailed to all known real estate
boards nationwide to attend a meeting hosted by
the Chicago Real Estate Board in the YMCA
Auditorium on South La Salle Street, May 12-14,
1908. Representatives attended from Baltimore
(the oldest continually operating real estate
board, established in 1855), Chicago (established
in 1883), Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Duluth,
Fresno, Gary, Kansas City, Los Angeles,
Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Omaha (established in
1885), Philadelphia, St. Louis (established in
1876), St. Paul (established in 1892), Seattle,
Sioux City, Tacoma, and Washington, D.C. The
California State Realty Federation was the only
state organization officially represented there, by
Leonard Merrill of Los Angeles and W. E. G.
Saunders of Fresno. The Chicago Record-Herald of
May 12, 1908, in an advance story on the meeting,
reported:
Fifteen years ago there was a national body
of real estate men. Then came the hard
times of 1893 and the organization broke
asunder and has apparently not been ready
for reunion until the present time. Twentythree
cities will join in the movement to
revive the national association.
The meeting resulted in the creation of the
National Association of Real Estate Exchanges.
General Nathan William MacChesney, then
attorney for the Chicago Real Estate Board,
supervised the writing of a constitution and a set
of bylaws. A code of ethics was anticipated by
the founders, and the bylaws mandated a standing
committee on ethics. Dues were set at $1 per year
with a membership fee of $50. However, the
membership basis was established as being city
real estate boards, to the exclusion of state associations,
a situation that Californians felt limited
their influence. It became almost impossible to
get boards on the Pacific Coast to join an organization
based as far away as Chicago. The
California State Realty Federation, through its
first full-time secretary Herbert W. Burdett, tried
to make the case, unsuccessfully at first, that if
state associations were allowed to join the national
association, then delegates could be selected to
represent the local boards.
Formally incorporated on July 2, 1908, the
National Association of Real Estate Exchanges
set up its first office in borrowed quarters—the
board rooms of the Chicago Real Estate Board.
Edward A. Halsey, who had chosen to be called
executive secretary rather than president, was the
initial driving force, promoting the association’s
7
existence, quality, and potential. He had
the foresight to describe what was needed
nationwide, such as uniform state
laws relating to real estate contracts,
deeds and mortgages, and exclusive
agency. “Exclusive agency would
revolutionize our whole business,”
he stated “If we can say to owners
you must sell through some one
man or you cannot sell through
any of the members of this board,
we can make it stick.”
THE THREE-WAY
AGREEMENT
Real estate activity is multi-layered.
More transactions take
place locally than elsewhere within
a state or the country, and
therefore association with fellow
real estate agents is primarily on a
local level. At first, some local
boards operated without either state or national
affiliation. Others paid dues to the state association,
or the national association, or both. The
impact of both state and federal legislation on real
estate operations made a three-level association
of membership logical, but it was many years
before that hierarchy was formalized.
In 1926, the California Real Estate Association
ratified three-way membership to go into effect
when approved by the national association. By
1935, however, only eight state associations had
similar three-way agreements in place and the
National Association of Real Estate Boards
dispensed with such requirements. Today most
REALTORS® pay membership dues to local associations
and those local associations collect dues
for their state association and the national association
as well. But, for exceptional circumstances,
the bylaws of the California Association still
permit individuals who can make a case for not
joining a local association to join the state association
directly, and the bylaws of the National
Association still permit a local association to join
it directly, without also being part of a state
association.
The National Association of Real
Estate Exchanges became the
National Association of Real Estate
Boards in 1916 and evolved into
the present National Association
of REALTORS® (NAR) in 1974.
With 1,100,000 members, it is
one of the largest and most
respected trade organizations in
the country. The National
Association’s Political Action
Committee (RPAC), originally
called the “Washington Committee,”
supports NAR’s lobbying efforts,
which are regarded as very influential
on Capitol Hill. NAR
continues to be headquartered in
Chicago but in 2004 opened a
brand new “green” twelve-story
building in Washington, D.C., at
500 New Jersey Avenue, NW, just
three blocks from the U.S. Capitol.
The California Real Estate Association became
the California Association of REALTORS® in
1975 and currently has 160,000 members. It is
still headquartered in Los Angeles, and has a legislative
office in Sacramento. The San Francisco
Real Estate Board adopted the business name of
the San Francisco Board of REALTORS® in 1973
and revised that to the San Francisco Association
of REALTORS® in 1989, more accurately reflecting
the trade association nature of the
organization. It is regarded within the San
Francisco business community and local government
circles as a consistent advocate of private
property rights and cost-effective government.
Natural increases in the membership levels of
organized real estate were helped by virtue of two
significant changes made in 1972. The National
Association constitution and bylaws were
amended to create a REALTOR-ASSOCIATE®
classification for licensed salespersons affiliated
with a broker who was a REALTOR®. At the
same time, local associations were given the
option of granting full REALTOR® membership
8
Herbert W. Burdett of Santa
Monica, First State Secretary. Photo
reprinted from California Real
Estate Magazine, June 1938.
to sales associates. The mandatory date for local
associations to adopt one or the other approach
was January 1, 1974. In the late 1970s, with
encouragement from several National
Association of REALTORS® officers, the second
approach, called the “All-REALTOR® program,”
became the more popular. By now, most local
associations around the country have adopted an
All-REALTOR® program, and it is common for
sales associates to be elected to boards of directors
and to become presidents of their associations, a
status previously only available to the brokerowners
of companies.
THE STRUGGLE
TO ESTABLISH A
CALIFORNIA REAL ESTATE
LICENSE LAW
Early on, most reputable real estate dealers in
California came to the conclusion that the best
way to force unscrupulous operators out of business
would be to pass a license law for real estate
practitioners. Architects were successful in doing
the same thing at the turn of the century. State
licensing of architects had been in place since
1901 with legal remedies to stop unlicensed individuals
representing themselves as architects.
A real estate license law and the establishment
of a state Real Estate Commission (a government
agency to administer the law) was approved for
adoption at the California State Realty
Federation’s convention in 1911. After a great
deal of late night effort in 1913, led by Federation
president W. L. Atkinson and legislative committee
chair and past-president (1908) Dan W.
Carmichael, the California legislature passed a
license law. Carmichael was a Sacramento broker
at the time and was able to make the services of
his stenographers available for retyping amended
versions of the bill.
But opposition from within the San Francisco
Real Estate Board, some members of which
believed that the licensing law as written was not
strong enough to drive curbstoners away from the
business, caused Governor Hiram W. Johnson to
veto the bill. The secretary of the California
State Realty Federation, James G. Stafford, writing
in the Federation’s official publication Real
Estate in July 1913, however, described a great
moral victory in having at least achieved passage
of the bill through the Legislature. “One man’s
adverse opinion proves nothing, even though he
be the Governor of this State,” Stafford ventured,
promising to renew the fight in the next lawmaking
session two years later.
In 1915, a revised license law passed the
Legislature with the united support of real estate
interests in California. Unfortunately, it was
vetoed again by Governor Johnson, this time
based on opinions generated by his own legal
advisors.
In 1917, a third version of a license law was
passed by the Legislature. The new governor,
William D. Stephens, signed the bill and appointed
Assemblyman Freeman H. Bloodgood as the
state’s first real estate commissioner. Bloodgood
had been a real estate broker in Inglewood prior
to his election and he had carried all three bills
through the Assembly. Plans were made to
implement the licensing of brokers, forms were
distributed by local boards, and the law was in
operation technically for eight months. But in
1918, the California Supreme Court found that it
violated the state constitution because certain
other business professionals, such as insurance
agents and bankers, were exempt from its requirements.
Finally, in 1919, a fourth license law was passed
by the California legislature, this time based on a
model developed for use nationwide by General
McChesney of the National Association of Real
Estate Boards, who had been that organization’s
general counsel since 1908. Again it was signed
by Governor Stephens, and this time it survived
the anticipated legal challenges to become the
first real estate license law in the United States.
Other states followed soon after with similar legislation—
Louisiana, Michigan, Oregon, and
Wisconsin. The first California real estate commissioner
under the 1919 law was Ray L. Riley.
9
ADOPTING A
CODE OF ETHICS
Concurrent with attempts to get license laws in
place, at a national level the need for a Code of
Ethics became a priority to differentiate reputable
real estate agents from the unscrupulous. At the
annual convention of the National Association of
Real Estate Exchanges in Winnipeg in 1913, the
first Code of Ethics was adopted, largely based on
a code already accepted by Kansas City brokers.
The title “Ethics of the Real Estate Profession”
clearly indicated the hope of industry leaders that
real estate brokerage would become a respected
profession.
The Code of Ethics has been updated many
times since to reflect the standards and terminology
of the times, but it remains vital today as the
primary distinguishing factor between a real
estate licensee and a licensee who is also a member
of the National Association of REALTORS®.
In 2001, the National Association implemented
the mandatory study and passing of an ethics class
by its members every four years.
Since the Code of Ethics was adopted in 1913,
it has been amended at the annual conventions
in 1924, 1928, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1955, 1956,
1961, 1962, 1974, 1982, and 1986, and fine-tuned
almost every year since. It has a Preamble and
three major sections: Duties to Clients and
Customers; Duties to the Public; and Duties to
REALTORS®. The preamble starts with “Under
all is the land. Upon its wise utilization and widely
allocated ownership depend the survival and
growth of free institutions and of our civilization.”
It includes the Golden Rule: “Whatsoever ye
would that others should do to you, do ye even so
to them.” Within the three main sections are a
number of Articles, and many of the Articles are
expanded upon by one or more Standards of
Practice. The full Code of Ethics is available at
www.realtor.org and it has been translated into
Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog, and
Vietnamese.
10
Cover of the first Code of Ethics adopted by the
National Association of Real Estate Exchanges in 1913.
Image courtesy of the National Association of REALTORS®.
11
DUTIES TO CLIENTS.
1. Be absolutely honest, truthful,
faithful and efficient. Ever bear in
mind that the broker is an employee,
that his client is his employer and is
entitled to the best service the real
estate men can give — his information,
talent, time, services, loyalty,
confidence and fidelity.
2. Be conservative in giving advice
and, where not reasonably well posted,
refrain from giving opinion of value.
3. Inspect client’s property, if possible,
before offering it for sale, and
always inform the buyer if that has not
been done.
4. Do not depreciate the price of
property unless the price is too high;
ask that the price be reasonable, and
tell the owner that it must be so if he
expects his agent to make an attempt
to sell it.
5. Obtain sole agency, in writing, if
it is property worthy of a special effort
to sell.
6. Advocate that the real consideration
be shown in a deed to property,
or one dollar and other valuable considerations.
7. Do not give special information
to inquiries over the telephone, or otherwise,
unless they are willing to give
their names and addresses. Let them
understand that the broker deals in the
open, and expects them to do likewise.
8. An agent should not ask for a
net price on property, unless he intends
to buy it himself, and so notifies his
client.
9. He should request his client not
to discuss price with the prospective
buyer, but persuade his client to refer
the matter to the agent, — thus
strengthening the agent’s position with
the buyer, and thus helping the agent
to make a better deal for his client.
10. An agent should always exact
the regular real estate commission of
the Association of which he is a member,
and always give his client to
understand at the beginning that he is
entitled to such and expects it.
Duties to Other Brokers.
1. An agent should respect the listings
of his brother agent, and
co-operate with him to sell, — provided
the other agent has the most
suitable place.
2. Advise an owner to renew a selling
contract with some other agent,
rather than solicit the agency, provided
the other agent has made a reasonable
attempt to sell the property during the
life of his contract.
3. Always be loyal, square, frank
and earnest in the matters that require
the co-operation of brokers, and
always speak kindly of competitors,
refusing to pass judgment on others
from hearsay evidence.
4. Advertise nothing but facts, and
be careful not to criticise by any
method a competitor’s proposition.
5. Give an honest opinion concerning
a competitor’s proposition when
asked to do so by a prospective purchaser,
even though such opinion will
result in a sale by the competitor.
6. Refuse to put a “For Sale” or
“For Rent” sign on property on which
a competitor already has his sign, provided
the placing of such sign was
through the authorization of the owner.
7. If an agent cannot efficiently
handle a proposition, he should refer
the matter to some competitor who
can.
8. Solicit co-operation of other
members of the Association in selling
Sole Agency listings, unless there is a
deal on, or there is some particular
buyer in sight, to whom a sale is
expected, and always be ready and
willing to divide the regular commission
equally with any member of the
Association who can produce a buyer
for any client.
9. Invoke friendly arbitrations by
the Real Estate Association rather than
through the courts of law, in settling
differences with other agents.
10. Do not disregard the rights of
other agents. Never refuse to work
through an owner’s regular agent, or
refuse to try to sell his property to a
live buyer unless handling the entire
deal and getting all the commission.
11. A broker will not put his name
in the newspapers in connection with a
deal unless really representing at least
one of the parties and receiving a part
of the commission, for such publicity
is a sham, and the result is to the disadvantage
of all.
12. When a sale or exchange is
handled by two agents, each agent
shall be given due credit in the report
of such sale or exchange.
13. Do not relay property, — i.e.,
do not submit to one agent or broker
that which is obtained from another
unless the case be exceptional, in
which case the third agent should
know that the property is not obtained
direct. A broker who relays represents
neither side, and is not entitled to the
same consideration as either of the
other agents.
Code of Ethics, as adopted in 1913
ETHICS
of the
REAL ESTATE PROFESSION
Adopted by the
National Association of Real Estate Exchanges
ORIGINATION OF
THE TERM REALTOR
Charles N. Chadbourn of Minneapolis coined
the term Realtor. By his own recollection twenty
years later:
One day while I was on my way to the
weekly meeting of our Minneapolis Real
Estate Board, I was annoyed by a dirty little
newsboy screaming the headlines of a scandal
sheet he was selling. “Real Estate Man
Swindles Poor Widow; read all about it!”
Investigation
proved that the
real estate man
was an obscure
shyster of no
business standing
and not a member
of our Board.
But the incident
set me thinking:
Every member of
our Board was
bespattered by
this incident. In order to be a member of
our Board we must be of good reputation
and be vouched for by reputable business
men. Then we must live up to a code of
ethics by which we govern our conduct.
Why should we not have a distinctive title
which would indicate these standards?
So the idea incubated and the result was
Realtor. Real estate is the ancient term
meaning “royal grant of land,” and realty,
real property and other combinations are in
common use. The suffix or denotes a doer,
e.g., executor, grantor, testator, etc. Hence
Realtor, one who does business in real
estate.
Twenty years ago a large delegation from
Minneapolis attended the ninth convention
of the National Association at New
Orleans and formally presented to it the
title Realtor. It was duly adopted and
defined, “a member of a real estate board
affiliated with the national association.” Its
exclusive control of the title has been confirmed
by 16 court decisions. The present
convention is celebrating the 20th anniversary
of its adoption.
The word is really a proper noun like
Englishman, Methodist and others denoting
a special Class and should always be
capitalized. It is pronounced in two syllables,
reel'-tor.
REGISTERING THE
TRADEMARK
Chadbourn’s term Realtor was
enthusiastically adopted at the
National Convention in 1916.
A “Diamond R” logo was later
developed and members of the
national association were proud
to use it on stationery and display
it in their offices. Federal trademark law dating
back to the Trade-Mark Act of 1881, updated in
1905, and again in 1920, was thoroughly overhauled
by the Lanham Act, which was signed by
President Truman on July 5, 1946. Immediately,
the National Association of Real Estate Boards
applied for registration of the words REALTOR®
and REALTORS®. The plural version was issued
as a collective service mark on September 13,
1949 (registration number 515,200), and registration
for the singular version, REALTOR®, was
issued four months later, on January 10, 1950
(number 519,789). The marks have been consistently
and strenuously protected from misuse ever
since. To this day, challenges are made that the
terms have entered into common usage, synonymous
with real estate agent. But as recently as
2004, in a decision issued by the United States
Patent and Trademark Office, the National
Association of REALTORS® successfully defended
its rights to prohibit non-members from using
12
Charles N. Chadbourn
the marks and to set standards for how the terms
are used, even in Internet domain names.
Company names or individual names can be
appended to the words, so long as those companies
or licensed individuals are members of the
National Association, but general terms such as
First, Best, or San Francisco cannot be used with
them. The serious intent of the National
Association to protect the trademarks is indicated
by its retention of the Chicago law firm Brinks
Hofer Gilson & Lione. Jerome Gilson was
declared by Euromoney magazine in 1998 to be
the “Top Trademark Lawyer in the World,” and
he was winner of the International Trademark
Association President’s Award in 2001.
The “Diamond R” logo was followed by one
that incorporated the phrase
“Under all is the land,” and
that was replaced in 1974 by
the familiar “Block R” logo,
which association members are
entitled to use, following the
National Association’s guidelines.
THE REAL ESTATE
ASSOCIATIONMERGER
In 1935, a group of San Francisco neighborhood
real estate brokers formed an independent
Real Estate Association as an alternative to the
San Francisco Real Estate Board, which was
regarded by many as a downtown brokers group.
The Real Estate Association could not be affiliated
with the state and national associations, whose
rules permitted only one Board per city, so a few
of its broker members also maintained a membership
in the San Francisco Real Estate Board. But
by 1947, it was clear to the Real Estate
Association leadership that a merger with the San
Francisco Real Estate Board would benefit all of
its members, and committees were established to
explore the idea. It would take four years to
achieve this merger.
Herbert U. Nelson, secretary of the National
Association of Real Estate Boards, and Eugene
Conser, secretary of
the California Real
Estate Association,
were highly encouraging
of the merger,
and the eyes of the
state organization
were on San
Francisco in 1951
with local broker
Willard L. Johnson
as president of
CREA. Finally, the
merger was approved
by the membership of
both groups and took
effect on July 10, 1951, creating a unified San
Francisco Real Estate Board. With 1,235 members,
it became the second largest board in
California after Los Angeles and the fifth largest
city board in the country. The 1951 presidents of
the San Francisco Real Estate Board and the Real
Estate Association, F. Burt Hulting and
Alexander Cutler, respectively, worked very hard
to effect the merger of their two organizations.
Cutler went on to be the 1952 president of the
unified San Francisco Real Estate Board, which
then had a 42-person board of directors to ensure
representation from across the city.
D. D. Watson, California Real Estate
Commissioner from 1948 to 1957 and a former
CREA president (1931), characterized the unification
as “...a significant milestone in the progress
of organized real estate, important not only to
San Francisco but to real estate people everywhere.”
He believed that “the merger of these
two fine groups should result in one of the
strongest and most prominent boards in the
nation—a board truly worthy of San Francisco.
Each of the now merged boards was outstanding
in its own right, but it goes almost without saying
that the consolidation will result in a stronger
force for the good of the San Francisco area, the
real estate investing public and the new board’s
members. I congratulate the combined membership
of the board and entertain no fears for its
unqualified success.”
13
Willard L. Johnson
STANDARD FORMS
The San Francisco Real Estate Board first
developed a standardized purchase contract form
in 1907. It was one legal-sized page (8.5 x 14
inches). It was created by the “uniform forms”
committee of the San Francisco Real Estate
Board, better known today as the standard forms
committee.
This one-page contract served the local market
for many years. In essence, it established an offer
to purchase by a buyer and an acceptance to sell
by an owner of real property, subject only to the
delivery of clear, insurable title to the property.
The payment of a commission to a broker was
recorded on the contract, with no provision for
the sharing of that commission. This one-page
form survived in San Francisco, with some revisions,
into the late 1970s. It was reproduced by
title companies which printed pads of the forms
for use by their brokerage customers.
The California Real Estate Association created
its first standard forms in 1922. Frazier O. Reed,
who was to become president of CREA in 1924,
led the effort to create the first two forms:
an Authorization to Sell, a listing agreement
providing a broker with an exclusive right to market
a property for sale, and a Deposit Receipt, a
14
Signing the merger, seated: presidents Burt Hulting and Alex Cutler; standing: secretaries Dick Harding and O.T. Peterson.
Photo courtesy of Robert Cutler.
15
The first standard purchase contract form developed by the San Francisco Real Estate Board in 1907.
contract between
a buyer and a seller
for the purchase
and sale of real
property. The
purchase contract
allowed for no
conditions, except
for merchantable
title, and provided
that the
buyer’s deposits
could be retained
by the seller as
consideration for
the execution of
the agreement by
the seller in the
event that the
buyer failed to
perform on the contract. Time was stated to be
“the essence of this agreement,” with the proviso
that one thirty-day extension would be allowed at
the discretion of the real estate agent named in
the contract. Payment of a commission to the
named agent was provided for in the contract.
The form was approved by the newly-established
California State Real Estate Department for use
throughout the state.
By 1945, CREA had seven different standard
forms in use. The first significant revision to their
standard purchase contract came in 1954. This
removed the commission paragraph from the
form, requiring an addendum to be written for
commissions to be paid to the broker(s) involved.
In 1978, a revised purchase contract form was
released by the recently renamed California
Association of REALTORS®, still as a one-page
form. In 1984, it was updated. In 1986, following
significant legal decisions, a complete rewrite
extended the form to four legal-sized pages. In
1993, the form was extended again, to six pages,
and in 1994, to eight legal-sized pages. In 1997, it
was revised to include a one-page Buyer’s
Inspection Advisory. In April 2000, the font size
was reduced and the form reconfigured to eight
letter-sized pages, with a two-page Buyer’s
Inspection Advisory. In October 2000, a separate
“Area Edition” contract was produced, aimed at
specific locales in California which were not
using the CAR form, particularly Marin and San
Mateo counties. In October 2002, a consolidated
residential purchase agreement, the RPA-CA,
was approved by the board of directors of the
California Association of REALTORS® for
statewide use, over opposition from some
Southern California brokers.
In San Francisco, successive generations of
standard forms committees have maintained a
purchase contract tailored to local legislative
requirements and business practices. The 1907
one-page contract has developed over time into
today’s seven-page form, which anticipates concurrent
use of the California Association’s Buyer’s
Inspection Advisory. The San Francisco
Association of REALTORS® is one of a small
number of associations in California that now
maintains its own private library of forms on the
forms software platform endorsed and supplied by
the California Association of REALTORS®.
Buying real estate in California has changed in
the last 100 years from a philosophy characterized
by caveat emptor, buyer beware, to one where sellers
are advised to disclose everything they know
about a property they are selling. Today, to support
the complexity of modern real estate
transactions, the California Association maintains
a library of approximately 250 standard
forms, and the San Francisco Association maintains
an additional library of 25 more, of which
the local purchase contract is just one. With the
primary distribution of standard forms being
online, the forms can be updated easily, currently
on a twice-yearly cycle, in April and October.
DISCLOSURE OBLIGATIONS
In 1963, the California Court of Appeal, in a
case called Lingsch v. Savage, found that "where
the seller knows of facts materially affecting the
value or desirability of the property which are
known or accessible only to him and also knows
that such facts are not known to, or within the
reach of the diligent attention and observation of
16
Frazier O. Reed
the buyer, the seller is under the duty to disclose
them to the buyer." A real estate licensee was
held to be equally obligated to disclose actual
knowledge they had concerning the property
being sold.
In 1984, in the landmark decision of Easton v.
Strassburger, the Court of Appeal expanded the
duty of disclosure in residential sales beyond
actual knowledge to include "the affirmative duty
to conduct a reasonably competent and diligent
inspection" of the property "to disclose ... all facts
materially affecting the value or desirability of
the property that such an investigation would
reveal."
The California legislature, with encouragement
from the California Association of
REALTORS®, responded to the Easton case by
clarifying seller and real estate licensee obligations
through Civil Code sections 1102 et seq.
and 2079 et seq. Moreover, the approved form
now in use statewide, the Real Estate Transfer
Disclosure Statement (TDS), was set forth in
Section 1102.6.
Section 2079.3 confirmed important limits
on the Easton obligation by providing that "...the
inspection to be performed pursuant to this article
does not include or involve an inspection of
areas that are reasonably and normally inaccessible
to such an inspection, nor an affirmative
inspection of areas off the site of the subject
property or public records or permits concerning
the title or use of the property."
Furthermore, Section 2079.5 made it clear
that these statutory revisions to Easton were not
intended to relieve the buyer "of the duty to
exercise reasonable care to protect himself or
herself, including those facts which are known to
or within the diligent attention and observation
of the buyer..."
Subsequent cases have further clarified the
duties of sellers and brokers; for example, as a
result of Alexander v. McKnight (1992), sellers
now have a duty to disclose non-physical defects,
including neighborhood conditions.
SFAR developed a Supplement to the TDS in
the 1990s for use with San Francisco property
sales and a General Information document (now
available in three languages) explaining the
numerous considerations that can apply in San
Francisco real estate transactions. CAR has
developed advisories for sellers to inform them of
their disclosure obligations and for buyers to
advise them of the importance of performing
their own inspections using qualified contractors.
In sum, organized real estate has progressed a
long way since the days when sellers claimed no
duty to disclose under the old philosophy of
caveat emptor.
MULTIPLE LISTING SERVICES
Multiple listing services
provide a systematic
means for brokers to
promote properties
they have listed
for sale and to
extend an offer of
compensation to
other members of the
service who cooperate
in the sale by representing a
buyer for the property.
Unlike the word Realtor, the term multiple
listing has an indeterminate origin and is not
trademarked in the United States, although its
usual acronym MLS is trademarked in Canada by
the Canadian Real Estate Association. The term
is thought to have been in general use in the
United States by 1907. However, brokers in
Cincinnati and San Diego are considered to have
operated such services as early as 1887. The San
Diego Realty Board set up a separate corporation
called the “Real Estate Exchange of San Diego.”
Members of this listing bureau agreed to list only
on a standard form providing for “exclusive agency,”
whereby a seller employs one broker only to
market a property.
Multiple listing services did not become well
accepted until the 1920s. The most successful
one in California for many years was started by
the Southwest Branch of the Los Angeles Realty
Board, which was founded on multiple listings in
17
1921. Membership in
the service included
dues to the Los Angeles
Realty Board and to the
state and national associations.
Recognizing the
potential for such
services, the California
Real Estate Association
established a Multiple
Listing Division. For
many years its chairman
was A. C. Hoodenpyle,
who worked tirelessly
helping different boards set up multiple services,
with varying degrees of success.
In San Francisco, the first such service was an
independent one, the Multiple Listing Service of
San Francisco, Inc. The 1948 president of the
San Francisco Real Estate Association, Max F.
Robinson, appointed a committee to initiate the
creation of the first multiple listing service in San
Francisco, an idea which enjoyed strong support
and got underway in 1949. Its bylaws required, as
a prerequisite of membership, that brokers be
members of either the San Francisco Real Estate
Board or the San Francisco Real Estate
Association. This point was one of the factors
that led to the merger of the two groups in 1951.
At a conference in Fresno in the spring of
1952, Frank O. Renstrom, at that time president
of the Multiple Listing Service of San Francisco
and a past president (1950) of the San Francisco
Real Estate Association, reported on the promotional
efforts to popularize the MLS in San
Francisco. “We had advertisements in about 70%
of the public vehicles of San Francisco for a period
of over three months. We circularized every
home in the city with literature. Before that people
were asking ‘What is Multiple Listing Service
and how does it work?’ Now, although we are a
long way from completing the advertising, people
call and say they want their property put into
Multiple Listing Service…. Multiple Listing
Service is to real estate what the stock market is
to stock.”
The concluding talk at the 1952 conference
was given by Irving E. Baker of the Oakland Real
Estate Board on “New and Modern Techniques in
Photographic Transfer and Equipment,” extolling
the virtues of establishing photos as an integral
part of the multiple listing operation. Multilith
equipment was demonstrated to the group, with
an operator reproducing listings and photos.
In 1949 the MLS had been founded with a
charter membership of 137 offices employing over
350 active sales people. It quickly became a very
profitable operation on fees of one dollar per listing
and one percent of the total commission if a
property was sold in-house by a broker after
putting it in the MLS, or three percent of the
commission if the property was sold by a cooperating
broker-member of the MLS.
In 1959 the MLS became a member-owned
stock cooperative, issuing one share of stock per
member, and it paid dividends. The organization
built its own office at 1532 Taraval Street in 1957
and installed its own printing plant. In December
1963, with a subscriber base of 600 offices and
over 2,000 agents, an important milestone was
reached with a sale that took the cumulative total
of sales through the service over the one billion
dollar mark. (By contrast, in 2005, more than
one billion dollars of San Francisco property sales
through the Association’s MLS will be achieved
every quarter.)
Using a Rand McNally map of San Francisco
and the northern peninsula, the MLS divided the
city into major districts for the purposes of distributing
property listing information. The
districts were as follows: Richmond, Sunset,
Parkside, Ocean Avenue, Marina, Western
Addition, Haight Ashbury, Upper Market, West
of Twin Peaks, North Beach, North of Market,
South of Market, Inner Mission, Outer Mission,
Visitacion Valley, and Bayview. Neighborhood
names familiar to us today are conspicuous by
their absence. The Western Addition embraced
Pacific Heights, and the Richmond included
Presidio Heights and Sea Cliff. Nob Hill and
most of Russian Hill were simply parts of the
North of Market area. Noe Valley was split
between the Upper Market and the Inner
18
A. C. Hoodenpyle
Mission, which also included Potrero Hill.
In 1966, the San Francisco Real Estate Board,
led by president John Ritchie, tried to buy the
assets of the MLS. A level of understanding was
reached with its president, Jack Sumski, but some
broker-shareholders within that organization were
determined to maintain its independence. At the
initiative of secretary Richard Loughlin, the San
Francisco Real Estate Board approved the creation
of its own competing multiple listing
system, which to avoid a conflict over the use of
the term MLS was called the REALTORS®
Multiple Sales Service (RMSS). For several years
the two services co-existed, but gradually the
Board-operated service gained majority support.
A lawsuit filed by the MLS of San Francisco
against the Real Estate Board alleging unfair practices
was decided in the Real Estate Board’s favor
by a directed verdict from the judge on December
18, 1978, after a twenty-day jury trial.
The San Francisco Real Estate Board used a
Thomas Brothers map to define its multiple
service districts, which, for the convenience of
the members, at first divided the city into exactly
the same set of districts as the MLS map had
done. Both maps extended into San Mateo
County, servicing Daly City, Colma, and Brisbane
principally, but also including South San
Francisco, San Bruno, Millbrae, Burlingame, and
Pacifica. The Board map went even further
south, however, to Hillsborough and Belmont on
the peninsula, and to Half Moon Bay on the coast.
Now, almost forty years later, the San Francisco
Association of REALTORS® continues to operate
its multiple listing service as a committee of the
Association, rather than as an independent operation
with a separate board of directors. The
current Association map divides the city of San
Francisco into ten districts and, within those
major districts, into as many as sixteen subdistricts.
19
In 1959 the Bay Area Multiple Listing Service became a member-owned stock cooperative,
issuing one share of stock per member.
Original stock certificate courtesy of John Dito.
The districts are referred to within the local brokerage
industry just by their numbers, while the
more than ninety subdistricts are lettered and
usually correspond to individual neighborhoods,
such as Cow Hollow, or they may group together
a few smaller neighborhoods for real estate marketing
purposes. The Association makes minor
boundary changes to its map occasionally, as
neighborhoods subtly change. The map has
become an influential division of the city, being
used as a reference, for example, when San
Francisco’s supervisorial district boundaries were
last redrawn.
SURVIVING THE 1906
EARTHQUAKE AND FIRE
Fourteen months after the founding of the San
Francisco Real Estate Board came an event that
would severely test the resolve of its members.
On Wednesday, April 18, 1906, residents of the
Bay Area were woken up at 5:12 a.m. to an earthquake,
the magnitude of which had never before
been felt in northern California. The 1906 earthquake
was recorded at ninety-six stations around
the world, and data from those seismographs continues
to be studied today. The same instrument
at Gottingen, Germany, 9,100 miles away from
the San Andreas Fault, was in operation during
both the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the
1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and comparisons of
those recordings lead scientists to conclude that
about sixteen times more energy was released in
1906 than in 1989. By the logarithmic scale
invented in 1934 by Dr. Charles F. Richter of the
California Institute of Technology, scientists
today now rate the 1906 earthquake at a magnitude
of 7.8. By comparison, the 1989 Loma
Prieta earthquake had a magnitude of 6.9. The
epicenter of the 1906 earthquake was much closer
to San Francisco than was that of the 1989 earthquake,
thereby causing the ground shaking to be
even more intense in the city.
As residents tried to help the injured and assess
the damage, a significant aftershock at 8:14 a.m.
caused further collapse of damaged buildings. But
as damaging as the earthquake and its aftershocks
were, the fires that burned largely out of control
for three days afterwards destroyed much more
property. With most of the water mains broken,
the city fire department had few resources with
which to fight the fires. Compounding their
problems, Chief Dennis T. Sullivan was mortally
wounded when the dome of an adjacent theater
crashed through the roof of the fire station in
which he was living on Bush Street.
The fire would ultimately destroy over 500 city
blocks before it was checked at Van Ness Avenue.
The property loss was estimated by a consulting
engineer for the National Board of Underwriters
to be eighty percent of the property value of the
city before the fire.
Many members of the San Francisco Real
Estate Board suffered a complete loss of their business
offices, since most were based downtown. In
fact, of the thirty founding companies of the
Board, no less than twenty-four had offices on
Montgomery Street, either in the Mills Building,
where the founding meeting had been held, or
within two blocks of it.
Josiah Howell, president of the San Francisco
Real Estate Board, convened a special meeting for
Sunday morning, April 22, 1906 at 1853 Fillmore
Street to discuss what assistance the Board could
provide both to its members and to local government
in the resettlement of displaced residents
and the rebuilding effort. Offers of help poured in
from real estate boards in other parts of the country.
The mayor of Oakland, Frank K. Mott, a real
estate broker and future president of the
California State Realty Federation (1909), had
already communicated with San Francisco mayor
Eugene E. Schmitz, offering Oakland’s assistance.
Mott also used his influence to stop real estate
owners in the East Bay from taking advantage of
the sudden need for accommodation.
San Francisco brokers quickly reestablished
themselves in temporary accommodations.
Baldwin & Howell opened for business in
Presidio Terrace, a new subdivision that they had
just started marketing; Boardman Bros. & Co. set
up at 1928 Vallejo; Shainwald, Buckbee & Co. at
2510 Pacific; Thomas Magee & Sons at 2550
20
Pacific; Madison & Burke at 212
Spruce; and O. D. Baldwin & Son
at 2965 Washington. The majority
of board members found office space
on Fillmore Street, which became
San Francisco’s new commercial
hub. A. J. Rich & Co. moved into
2421, Bovee, Toy & Co. into 2118,
Davidson & Leigh into 2007, Lyon
& Hoag into 1923, B. P. Oliver into
1904, Speck & Co. into 1902,
David Stern & Sons into 1845, and
G. H. Umbsen & Co., who were
able to advertise that they had
saved all of their books and records
from the fire, moved into 905
Fillmore. Within a month, Baldwin
& Howell and O. D. Baldwin &
Son were both to be found at 1912
Fillmore, Madison & Burke were two blocks away
at 2126, and Boardman Bros. & Co. had relocated
to 2325 Fillmore.
At a meeting in Madison & Burke’s temporary
office at 2126 Fillmore, the idea was formulated of
building a group office on the east side of Van
Ness Avenue between Grove and Fulton (where
City Hall is now). But the larger companies were
anxious to return to their downtown locations,
G. H. Umbsen & Co. announcing the rebuilding
of their building at 20 Montgomery Street and
Thomas Magee & Sons obtaining a permit for a
new twelve-story building on Market Street.
Daniel Burnham arrived in New York on a
steamer from Europe on April 26, 1906, and his
immediate reaction to the news of the earthquake
was telegraphed to San Francisco. “If the people of
San Francisco can only pull themselves together,”
he said, “I am confident they will have in a very
short time the finest city in the world. Courage
and work is all that is required and I believe both
will be forthcoming.”
Willis Polk convinced Burnham to reopen a
San Francisco architectural office, which Polk
then ran until July 1910.
Herbert E. Law, owner with his brother
Hartland of the Monadnock Building on Market
Street and the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill, both
of which were under construction
at the time of the earthquake and
fire, was keen to get started on
rebuilding. But, he said,
“We must know what the
city proposes to do in the way
of reconstruction. A new
city must rise, built with fire
barriers and capable of handling
existing traffic. It
would be penny-wise and
pound-foolish, in my judgment,
to build anything but a
fire-proof city. I believe that
if the city had been constructed
according to
Burnham’s plans we would
have gotten off with onetenth
of the loss we sustained. It is no
dream, that of rebuilding the city in proper
fashion; we’ve simply got to do it. Men
want to come here and feel that their
money is safe. There will be no trouble
about finances. If Japan can get immense
loans upon a little island where they rock
babies to sleep with earthquakes, it would
be strange if San Francisco with its incidental
earthquake should go unbacked.”
The Law brothers had adequate insurance on
the Monadnock Building, but were under-insured
on the Fairmont Hotel, which had been just
about to open. The structure of the hotel,
designed by the Reid Brothers, withstood the
earthquake, but the interior was burned out. The
Law brothers lamented the loss of William
Baumgarten, the designer of much of the interior
of the hotel, who had dropped dead in New York
on hearing of the disaster. A young architect,
Julia Morgan, supervised the repair of the
Fairmont, which opened on April 18, 1907,
exactly one year after the earthquake.
The first priority for other owners was also to
get their businesses up and running again.
Immediately after the fire, many temporary buildings
were constructed, authorized by permits
issued by the mayor. Permanent replacements
21
W.A. Magee
were commissioned and the San Francisco
Architectural Club calculated that by July 31,
1909, the value of new buildings and alterations
had reached almost $140 million, of which over
half had been spent on class
A, B, or C construction (steel
frame, reinforced concrete
frame, or masonry exterior),
the remainder on wood-frame
construction. Wood-frame
buildings were banned from
the downtown area by ordinance.
The value of the
285,000 tons of steel used in
the replacement buildings was
almost $21 million, a cost of
about $73 per ton.
Another strong earthquake
in Northern California in late
October 1909, provided a
reminder for everyone of
1906, and the Board of
Supervisors soon decreed that
all temporary buildings, of
which no good record had
been maintained, had to be
demolished or removed by
May 1, 1910.
On June 7, 1914, the
Examiner reported the achievement
of Miss Irma Coxe, who
had single-handedly completed
the task of copying
150,000 diagrams of original
real estate surveys of every lot
in San Francisco up to 1906.
The papers had essentially
been “cooked” in a safe in the
old City Hall during the fire.
Coxe painstakingly separated
the charred papers from each
other with a thin blade,
mounting each page on a
linen slate so it could be
handled. After doing so, the
pencilled survey notes and
diagrams became visible, allowing her to reproduce
them. The new volumes of restored records
were placed in fireproof vaults.
22
Menu cover for the Annual Banquet of the San Francisco Real Estate Board,
April 11, 1912, at the Palace Hotel. Image courtesy of the author.
EARLY COMMITTEES
The San Francisco Real Estate Board conducted
business through a well-developed committee
structure. The membership committee took its
responsibilities very seriously, to ensure that only
reputable real estate dealers were admitted to the
membership of the Board. The appraisal committee
implemented a Board public service whereby
any owner, for a reasonable fee, could obtain a
professional and independent appraisal of the
value of their property. The luncheon committee
had the assignment of setting times and locations
for regular luncheon meetings, which
became valuable means of exchanging information
between brokers.
One of the most important luncheons scheduled
each year was the annual installation of new
officers. The menu for the 1912 “Annual
Banquet” at the Palace Hotel displays not just a
feast which would be hard to duplicate for a realistic
price today, but a creative vision of a sold-out
earth where the future opportunities for real
estate dealers were imagined to be inter-galactic!
23
Inside of the menu for the Annual Banquet of the San Francisco Real Estate Board,
April 11, 1912, at the Palace Hotel. Image courtesy of the author.
THE PANAMA-PACIFIC
INTERNATIONAL
EXPOSITION (PPIE)
The idea of holding an exposition in San
Francisco in 1915 to coincide with the opening of
the Panama Canal had surfaced first in 1904.
The treaty with Panama to build the canal was
ratified in February 1904, but businessman
Reuben Brooks Hale had already contacted directors
of the Merchants Association in January to
explore his exposition idea. In the fall of 1906,
Hale revived his idea again, forming a committee
to promote it. In December 1906, the Pacific
Ocean Exposition Co. was incorporated. In the
summer of 1909, the idea was generated of holding
a festival to celebrate the 140th anniversary of
the discovery of San Francisco Bay by Don
Gaspar de Portolá and to show off San Francisco’s
recovery from the April 1906 disaster at the same
time. The Portola Festival, held from October
19–23, 1909, became a big success, with several
foreign governments participating. It also
became a vital precursor to the idea of holding a
much larger international exposition in 1915.
On October 27, 1909, Hale gave a dinner at the
Bohemian Club which resulted in the idea of
mailing 2,500 representative citizens to ask if they
were in favor of the endeavor. One of the signatories
to the letter was Samuel G. Buckbee, then
president of the San Francisco Real Estate Board.
Before all the replies were in, it was decided to
schedule a meeting for December 7 at the
Merchant’s Exchange. Reactions to the letter
had been positive, and a larger meeting was set for
December 29. At that meeting the phrase “San
Francisco Invites the World” was coined. The
first “booster” postal cards were produced immediately,
to be mailed to friends and relatives around
the country promoting San Francisco’s intent.
The Panama-Pacific International Exposition
Company was incorporated on March 11, 1910.
Buckbee and another San Francisco Real Estate
Board founder, Gustave H. Umbsen, became
members of its Ways and Means Committee.
Some Southern California interests were promoting
the idea of holding the exposition in San
Diego. The conviction grew that there should be
no division on the main objective of holding the
exposition in California. William May Garland,
a founder of the Los Angeles Realty Board and its
president in 1909 and 1910, writing in the Los
Angeles Examiner, said,
The Exposition, which I think will be one
of the grandest affairs ever held in this
country, and worthy [of] the support of the
three great States facing upon the Pacific,
should be held in the geographical and logical
center of the Pacific Slope, San
Francisco. All portions of the Pacific Coast
24
A Call Building postcard used to “boost” for San Francisco.
Postcard courtesy of the author.
should join hands and cooperate in making
this one of the greatest successes in the history
of the country. It will mark the
completion of the greatest commercial
achievement ever undertaken by the
United States.
The Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco
canvassed commercial organizations in the state,
and a convention was called to meet in Santa
Barbara on March 22, 1910. Delegates representing
fifty cities and almost every county in the
state resolved that San Francisco was the “obvious
and logical” place and endorsed it, calling on
the whole state to support San Francisco’s application.
A public subscription meeting was
called for April 28, 1910, on the floor
of the Merchant’s Exchange. The
eyes of the country were on San
Francisco to see if the businessmen of
the city were prepared to commit
their own money to the effort. The
San Francisco Real Estate Board
made one of the earliest pledges that
afternoon in the amount of $70,000
(equivalent to over $1.4 million in
2005 dollars). By the end of the day,
an astounding aggregate total of
$4,089,000 had been raised. The
amount electrified the community.
One of the earliest acts of the
Exposition Directorate after the subscription
meeting was to send a delegation to Washington
to begin the effort of securing federal recognition.
The members included James N. Gillett, the governor
of California; P. H. McCarthy, the mayor of
San Francisco; James Rolph, Jr., the president of
the Merchant’s Exchange, who was to succeed
McCarthy as mayor in the fall of 1911; and
William May Garland of the Los Angeles Realty
Board.
From Louisiana came a similar delegation led
by Governor Sanders advocating that New
Orleans was “The Logical Point” for the exposition,
based largely on the idea that New Orleans
was closer to a greater percentage of the U.S. population.
Sixty-five million people were said to be
within one and one-half days’
travel of New Orleans and
only six million could
reach San Francisco within
the same time.
Intensive campaigning
by personal visits to representatives
and many
postcards and telegrams resulted,
but a significant push was needed on behalf of
San Francisco. The governor of California
endorsed the Exposition directors’ call for a mass
meeting, again on the floor of the Merchant’s
Exchange, on June 16, 1910. It was reported
there that the $4,089,000 raised seven weeks
before had grown to $5,033,805,
and there were pledges for even
more. The meeting lifted the total
of public subscriptions to
$6,156,840, but the most significant
result was the idea of a San
Francisco $5 million
tax-exempt bond issue. At the
November 8, 1910, election, a $5
million state tax amendment was
approved in addition to the local
bond issue for $5 million, so that by
the middle of November the exposition
had a total of $16 million at
its disposal. These amounts proved
to be critical in obtaining the
agreement of the House and Senate, and early in
1911 victory was won. A resolution awarding the
exposition to San Francisco was signed by
President Taft on February 15, 1911.
The Panama-Pacific International Exposition
(PPIE) was a huge success in 1915, opening on
February 20 and closing on December 4. The
success was made more remarkable by the fact
that a war had been underway in Europe since
August 1914. Over thirteen million paid visits
were made to the exposition, many to coincide
with meetings and conventions of fraternal societies
or business groups. July 1, 1915, was declared
to be National Real Estate Association Day.
The central group of courts and palaces of the
PPIE was built on land leased for the duration of
25
William May Garland
the exposition in an area known then as Harbor
View, but better known today as the Marina
district. An everlasting reminder of the PPIE for
San Franciscans and visitors is the Palace of Fine
Arts and Lagoon, designed by Bernard Maybeck,
which had anchored the western end of the central
group. This soulful composition was so
widely appreciated that a popular effort ensured it
was not demolished after the exposition closed
along with the rest of what were only intended to
be temporary structures.
THE POST-WORLDWAR I PERIOD
A number of events and concerns about commercial
investments in Europe triggered the
United States entering World War I in 1917.
President Woodrow Wilson announced the break
in diplomatic relations with Germany to
Congress on February 3, 1917, and Congress formally
declared war on April 6. It would be
eighteen months before the German forces
acknowledged defeat and petitioned the Allies for
an Armistice, signed in France on November 11,
1918. Kaiser Wilhelm II had abdicated on
November 9, going into exile in the Netherlands,
in the face of a German revolution which led to
the start of the Weimar Republic.
William May Garland of Los Angeles was president
of the National Association of Real Estate
Boards (NAREB) in 1917. Both he and the
NAREB secretary, Thomas S. Ingersoll, were
drafted by President Wilson into serving the
nation and organized the cooperation of real
estate brokers nationwide to supply the government
with sites for cantonments, office buildings,
shipyards, and military housing. Garland’s work
was valued so highly that the national association
re-elected him to serve as president in 1918.
Garland was paid a nominal one dollar per year
for his service, and the industry was proud that not
a single charge of profiteering was made against
real estate brokers anywhere in the country.
In 1921, Tom Ingersoll gave up his prestigious
job as secretary of NAREB to move out to Los
Angeles, an idea that had been in his mind since
1915, when he visited the fast-growing metropolis
during the first national convention held in
California. He became secretary of the Los
Angeles Realty Board, a position he held until he
died in 1933. Both the Los Angeles Realty Board
and the California Real Estate Association had
offices in the W.
M. Garland
Building on
Spring Street in
Los Angeles.
Garland,
although not a
president of the
state association,
was one of the
first to be awarded
the title of honorary
president.
In the early 1920s,
Garland worked
diligently to
secure the 1932
Olympics for Los Angeles and continued through that
decade as president of the Tenth Olympiad organizing
committee to ensure the event’s success.
In San Francisco, the demand for housing
increased after the war as troops who had passed
through the Bay Area in 1917 and 1918 were
demobilized and decided to return to seek
employment. Rental apartments were much in
demand, and many Victorian structures in the
city were turned into boarding houses or torn
down to be replaced with apartment buildings.
Cooperative apartment ownership ventures, the
first of which had been promoted just before
World War I, became popular for residents who
preferred to own rather than rent. But for tenants,
there was no shortage of options for rental
apartments as a building boom got underway.
One architect of quality Art Deco era buildings,
H. C. Baumann, reported that in one twelvemonth
period between 1927 and 1928, he had
designed no fewer than 137 apartment buildings!
Apartment house owners competed to offer the
most up-to-date features and promoted the convenience
of having a single landlord or manager
26
Thomas S. Ingersoll
to deal with, as
opposed to several
other cooperative
apartment owners.
1928 saw the
introduction of the
San Francisco Real
Estate Board Year
Book, which was to
be produced continuously
through 1991.
The Year Book
served as a complete
reference book for
the local real estate
broker as well as a
diary in which to
schedule appointments and keep notes. The initial
price was $1.75 for members and $3.00 for
non-members. It was replaced, starting in 1992,
with a Sourcebook, which omitted the diary section.
Initial reactions from many long-time
members caused both the Year Book and
Sourcebook to be offered in 1993, but that
became the final year of the Year Book, which is
still missed by some.
In June 1928, the California Real Estate
Association, under the direction of secretary Glenn
D. Willaman, began an annual series of special
issues of its California Real Estate Magazine publication,
called the
“State Growth
and Progress
Number.” These
issues provided an
array of statistics
on population
growth, farm output,
natural gas
and petroleum
production, bank
deposits, schools
and colleges, miles
of paved highways,
and many
other subjects.
By the time of
its twenty-fifth
anniversary in
1930, the state association
was proud
to point out that
the state had a
REALTOR® governor
in office, C.
C. Young from
Alameda, elected
in 1927, and had
also provided two
national association
presidents.
Named an honorary
president of
CREA, C. C. Young
had been a teacher at Lowell High School in San
Francisco. Harry B. Allen, president of the San
Francisco Real Estate Board 1923–1924 and president
of the state association in 1927, had been
one of Young’s pupils. At the national level,
Harry H. Culver, from Culver City, had just completed
his year as president in 1929. William
May Garland from Los Angeles was still the only
individual to have served two terms as national
president, in 1917 and 1918.
THE GREAT DEPRESSION
TAKES HOLD
National association membership peaked at
almost 19,000 in 1930, but the effects of the stock
market crash of November 1929 and the resulting
Great Depression saw membership drop back to
just over 10,000 by 1935. Membership in
California, which had peaked at over 4,000 in
1929, dropped to just over 1,500 in 1933, but
recovered to almost 3,000 by 1935. California
had its second REALTOR® governor in office,
Frank Finley Merriam from Long Beach, who succeeded
James Rolph, Jr. upon Rolph’s death in
1934 and was inaugurated in 1935 for a four-year
term. Merriam was also an honorary president of
the California Real Estate Association and for
almost twenty years, until just prior to his death
27
Glenn D. Willaman
Governor C.C. Young
H.C. Baumann
in 1955, he installed CREA’s new officers at the
January meetings.
San Francisco continued to grow despite the
Depression, supported by completion of the
O’Shaughnessy Dam and the Hetch Hetchy
Aqueduct in 1934. The “outside lands” (the
Richmond and Sunset districts) were under
development, and the need for land for housing
had triggered the relocation of cemeteries beyond
the city’s southern border.
Construction of San Francisco’s two major
bridges had begun in 1933. Both set different
world records in the process for overall length and
suspension span. The Bay Bridge opened to automobile
traffic on November 12, 1936, and the
Golden Gate Bridge had its official opening day
on May 27, 1937.
Another World’s Fair was called for in the
1930s, and the voters approved the idea of the
Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE).
Four hundred acres of land adjacent to Yerba
Buena Island were being dredged in 1935, initially
as a Works Progress Administration (WPA)
project. Later called Treasure Island, it was originally
intended to become San Francisco’s new
international airport. Instead, this man-made
island became the site for the GGIE, which
opened on February 18, 1939. The San Francisco
Real Estate Board promoted “one of the greatest
homes shows ever held in this country” during
the exposition. From May 15 to October 1, visiting
REALTORS® were invited to tour the host
home at the GGIE, followed by bus or limousine
tours to thirty architect-designed model homes in
five Bay Area counties – Alameda, Contra Costa,
Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo. Former
governor C. C. Young was given the key to officially
open the Baldwin & Howell-sponsored host
home. The photograph on the next page with its
original caption includes Walter P. Laufenberg of
Baldwin & Howell, who was president of the San
Francisco Real Estate Board in 1935, 1936, and
1939 and would become president of CREA in
1943. The thirty-fifth annual CREA convention
was held in Oakland June 11–17, 1939, and
Tuesday and Wednesday “caravan” tours were
organized to show the model homes to
convention attendees. “REALTORS® day” at the
Exposition was designated to be June 12, 1939.
San Franciscans were beginning to feel a little
unlucky at the timing of their world’s fairs as,
once again, hostilities threatened in Europe.
Attendance at the Exposition in 1939 was not as
great as hoped, and it was decided to re-open it
for another season in 1940, from May 25 to
September 29. REALTORS® day that year was
June 28. Unlike the 1915 PPIE, the GGIE was
not a financial success, despite being open for two
seasons.
In April 1941, the Navy took over Treasure
Island and the city would not get it back until
1997. The idea of Treasure Island being the city’s
new international airport was gone, and in 1945
San Francisco voters approved a one million dollar
bond measure for an expansion of Mills Field
in San Bruno.
28
Governor Frank Finley Merriam
IMPACT OF
THE SECONDWORLDWAR
Great Britain and the Commonwealth countries
formally declared war to stop German
aggression against the rest of Europe on
September 3, 1939. During 1940 and 1941, the
United States provided material assistance to
Britain without formally engaging in the war, but
the bombing of Pearl Harbor on the morning of
December 7, 1941, led to an immediate declaration
of war against Japan, which was followed the
next day by Germany and Italy declaring war on
the United States. World War II would last for
almost four more years.
The San Francisco Real Estate Board responded
by establishing panels of experts to answer
pre-inductees’ questions, free of charge, on real
estate, insurance, banking, business, and legal
issues.
As it had during World War I, the federal government
put rent controls in place during World
War II. In 1943, the San Francisco Real Estate
Board was provoked into protesting to its congressmen
in Washington about the “socialistic
philosophy” expressed by Paul Porter, deputy
administrator in charge of rent control for
the Office of Price Administration (OPA).
According to Raymond D. Smith, Executive Vice
President of the Board, Porter had been quoted as
29
Reprinted from California Real Estate Magazine, June 1939.
saying, “It is open to question whether home
ownership should be encouraged among middle
and lower income groups,” and that “the country
might be better off if the working class were
migratory.”
The Board’s response, articulated by Smith, was
Our country is founded on home ownership.
It is not the rent control law to which
we object, but the rules and regulations and
basic philosophy with which it is being
administered. Unless we preserve the right
to property and freedom of individual
action, we will have lost the war, even if we
conquer the (enemy).
Just over sixty years later, the present board of
the San Francisco Association of REALTORS®
would probably echo those words.
In 1943, the San Francisco Real Estate Board
lost one of its greatest assets, Leslie E. Burks, who
fell ill during the
year and died on
September 30. Burks
was an attorney by
training and had
been recruited to
join the Board in
1907, becoming its
first full-time employee,
known then as
the Secretary. His
brother, Chester W.
Burks, took over as
Secretary of the
Chamber of Commerce
at about the
same time. Leslie
Burks’s stature grew, along with his experience,
first in California and later nationwide. He
became known in real estate as the “Dean of
American Secretaries.”
The title for the position has evolved over
the years. It became Secretary-Manager, later
Association Executive or Chief Executive Officer,
and now, is more commonly titled Executive Vice
President (EVP). The function is that of executing
the actions of the board of directors,
administering the day-to-day operations of an
association, managing staff, and providing continuity
for the volunteer leadership—the elected
board of directors and committee chairs. Burks
served the San Francisco Real Estate Board in
this capacity for thirty-six years. James C. Fabris,
the present holder of the position, joined the
association in 1971 and is close to equaling
Burks’s tenure.
The state and
national associations
have been similarly fortunate
in selecting and
keeping well-regarded
administrators of their
operations. California
has twice provided the
national executive officer,
with Eugene P.
Conser, state EVP from
1946 to 1955, then
serving the national
association until 1970,
and H. Jackson Pontius,
who followed him in
both roles, remaining national EVP until 1978.
The current EVP of the California Association
of REALTORS®, Joel S. Singer, has held the
position since 1989 and is regarded as one of the
most influential and highly respected people in
real estate today, nationwide.
UNITED NATIONS FORMATION
The attention of the world was on San
Francisco in 1945 when a fifty-nation conference
met in the city to establish the United Nations.
The term “United Nations” had been coined by
President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941 to
describe the countries fighting against the Axis
powers. It was first used officially on January 1,
1942, when twenty-six countries joined in the
“Declaration by the United Nations,” pledging
themselves to continue their joint war effort and
not to negotiate a peace individually. As the war
continued, plans were made to make the “United
Nations” into a permanent organization, one that
30
Leslie E. Burks
Eugene P. Conser
would supplant the old League of Nations and be
more influential. All countries that had declared
war on Germany or Japan by March 1, 1945, were
called to a founding conference held at the War
Memorial Opera House in the Civic Center from
April 25 to June 26, 1945. The American delegates
were led by Edward R. Stettinius, Secretary
of State, and included Congressman Sol Bloom,
then seventy-five years old, who had grown up in
San Francisco. The result was a Charter which
was signed on June 26 and ratified by the required
number of countries by October 24, which is now
designated as United Nations Day. The San
Francisco Real Estate Board took pride in the
attention being cast on the city with full-page
advertisements in the California Real Estate magazine
that proclaimed that “The Eyes of the
World are Focused on San Francisco.” The city
was “The Pacific Gateway to America and the
Western Portal to the Far East.”
THE DEBATE OVER
REAL ESTATE COMMISSIONS
When real estate dealers first grouped together
in local boards or associations, to them an important
part of bringing order to the business was the
establishment of fair commission schedules for
the services provided, such as sales, leasing, and
property management. In their view, owners had
a right to be protected against exorbitant charges,
while reputable brokers with knowledge and
experience had a right to fair compensation for
the services rendered.
Although anti-trust legislation had been in
existence since the Sherman Act of 1890, it was
over fifty years after the formation of the earliest
boards that the question of publishing commission
schedules began to be viewed as
anti-competitive. The California Real Estate
Association and seventeen named local boards
and multiple listing services, which did not
include San Francisco, were defendants in an
anti-trust suit brought by the State of California.
CREA was defended by Moses Lasky, then a partner
in the San Francisco firm of Brobeck, Phleger
& Harrison. The result was a consent decree
entered into on August 21, 1962, that required
the defendants to cancel any published commission
schedules within three months and
prohibited multiple listing services from refusing
to accept listings because of the commission rate
offered. It did not prohibit individual brokers
from setting their own schedules of fees and it
allowed that boards could survey members on fees
in order to be able to respond to inquiries from
the public as to the commission fees generally
charged in the area.
Ever since, real estate firms have been careful
not to discuss what fees they charge with each
other, and multiple listing systems are designed to
show only what fee is being offered to the cooperating
broker, and not the total fee.
THE BOOM YEARS
LEAD TO CONTROLS
After the war ended in 1945, the United States
economy took time to recover, but as families put
their lives back together again, creating the generation
of “baby boomers” in the process, the
demand for housing resumed. Rent control had
been imposed under federal law in 1942, and concentration
on the war effort had meant that new
housing production had been minimal. In 1946,
Congress had acted to remove governmental controls
over prices and wages, but that did not
extend to rents. By 1947, it was apparent that the
continuation of rent control, after other price
controls were removed, was making the housing
shortage chronic and discouraging the production
of badly needed new rental units. The Federal
Rent Law of 1948 contained a provision authorizing
“Local Option” decontrol, and some states
took advantage of that. The 1950 law finally provided
for mandatory decontrol on December 31,
1951, but the war in Korea caused the postponement
of that termination date to September 30,
1952. A local council could declare a “critical
shortage,” which San Francisco did, extending
rent control in the city to June 1953, after which
it was terminated for twenty-five years.
31
In 1971, the San Francisco Real Estate Board
developed and published a public service booklet
called “Guidelines for Improved Owner-Renter
Relations,” emphasizing the benefits to be
obtained from improved communications and a
mutual respect for each other’s rights. Vacancy
rates for residential apartments seemed to be stabilized
in a range of four to six percent.
But in 1978, San Francisco’s Board of
Supervisors approved a politically popular downzoning
of residential neighborhoods. Height
limits and densities were reduced, resulting in a
virtual drying up of new apartment construction.
Supervisor Quentin Kopp (later an independent
state senator and recently retired from the San
Mateo County Superior Court) was one of only
three to vote against the plan, predicting that a
housing shortage would be created that would
drive the middle class out of the city. The results
were felt almost immediately.
By 1979, the pressure on accommodation in
San Francisco was such that tenant activists were
able to persuade the Board of Supervisors and
Mayor Dianne Feinstein that San Francisco
should reintroduce rent control. A protracted
struggle over the eviction of poor and elderly
Filipino tenants from the old International Hotel
on Kearny Street spawned a generation of tenant
activists. Further, the widespread raising of rents
by two of San Francisco’s largest landlords in
1979 caused large groups of working class and
middle class tenants to lobby local politicians for
relief. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors
first passed a sixty-day rent freeze, but before it
had even expired, on June 13, 1979, a new
Residential Rent Stabilization and Arbitration
Ordinance was signed into law.
The first finding in the Ordinance states:
There is a shortage of decent, safe and
sanitary housing in the City and County of
San Francisco resulting in a critically low
vacancy factor.
With that as a starting premise, rent control
was enacted, with protection for tenants from
eviction without cause and annual rent increase
limits in the range of four to seven percent. The
actual percentage was to be determined annually
by the Board of Supervisors. Owner-occupied
buildings of four units or less were exempt, along
with new buildings completed after the date of
enactment. An even more stringent measure
placed on the November 1979 ballot by tenant
groups, Proposition R, which included restrictions
on the rents of vacant units, was soundly defeated
by a fifty-nine to forty-one percent margin.
But since 1979, tenant groups have succeeded
in getting San Francisco voters to approve a
reduction in the permitted annual rent increase
percentage to sixty percent of the Bay Area
Consumer Price Index increase for the San
Francisco-Oakland Metropolitan Area (effective
December 8, 1992), which has meant a less than
one percent increase in recent years, and removed
the exemption from rent control of owner-occupied
four-or-less unit buildings (effective May 1,
1994).
Twenty-five years after its enactment, San
Francisco rent control is being called into question.
Studies have shown that it is not
benefitting the people it was intended to help—
the poorer families. Over twenty percent of
households in rent-controlled apartments have
annual incomes exceeding $100,000, and over
seventy-five percent of households in rent-controlled
apartments have no children. Many small
property owners prefer to keep units vacant rather
than rent them under the controls. One perversity
of the San Francisco real estate market is that
buildings are worth more with vacant units in
them when owners elect to sell, because of the
shortage of property with available units which
can be owner-occupied.
CONDOMINIUM OWNERSHIP AND
LIMITATIONS ON CONVERSIONS
One of the primary reasons for the shortage of
property to buy in San Francisco is the incredibly
restrictive limit on the number of condominium
units that can be converted each year. Since
1982, that limit has been 200 units per year, with
32
a complete ban on converting buildings of more
than six residential units. Since there are approximately
400,000 units in San Francisco, that
means only one-twentieth of one percent of the
housing stock of the city can be converted to
ownership housing per year.
Condominiums became popular in the early
1960s. Prior to that, the most common form of
multiple ownership of buildings was the stock
cooperative, introduced to San Francisco in 1912
by developer and San Francisco Real Estate Board
member William F. Chipman, who pioneered the
idea of what were then called “community
homes.” In a cooperative, the members own
stock in a non-profit mutual benefit corporation,
rather than real property. The corporation in
turn owns the building, and the members have
perpetual leases to their apartments. Following
passage of the Housing Act of 1961, the Federal
Housing Authority (FHA) announced that it
could now insure mortgages made on individual
condominium units, which opened up the secondary
mortgage market for condominium loans.
Legislation followed to enable conventional
lenders to lend on condominiums and to resell
those loans as securities.
In San Francisco, the first major building to
convert to condominiums was the highrise at 631
O’Farrell Street. Designed in 1929 by Albert H.
Larsen for the Paso Robles Realty Company, it
had started life as the Alexander Hamilton Hotel,
named after one of the Founding Fathers.
Hamilton was appointed by George Washington
in 1789 as the first Secretary of the Treasury and
he is credited with installing the basis of our modern
financial system in the United States. The
Hamilton, as the building is now simply known,
was reconfigured from over 400 hotel suites to
198 condominium units, including a spectacular
penthouse. The condominium map was recorded
on October 10, 1962, and the first sales were
recorded on March 18, 1963. A 1,000 square foot
one-bedroom unit on the fifteenth floor that cost
$31,000 in March 1963 was sold in May 2002 for
$419,000. A CPI comparison of the relative
value of $31,000 in 1963 gives $182,000 in 2002.
Condominiums are the affordable housing
component for many families and individuals in
San Francisco and have proven to be a good
investment. But with comparatively little land
available on which to build new condominium
buildings, and a prohibition on converting buildings
with more than six units, the current laws are
depriving tenants of opportunities to buy property
and build equity.
THE TECHNOLOGICAL
REVOLUTION HITS REAL ESTATE
Automation first came to real estate through
MLS systems. While the application has never
been on the leading edge of computer science and
has never had the criticality of, say, a banking system,
it has nevertheless taken advantage of
advances in computer and telecommunications
technology.
Many people still working in the profession
today can remember the distribution of listing
information on punched cards first, then in a
weekly book form, then accessible online at 300
baud through teletype machines, and gradually
advancing to the high speeds of today’s Internet
connections from a variety of devices, many of
them wireless. The search and retrieval of relevant
property data is now virtually instantaneous,
as is the notification speed to other members
when a new property has been submitted to the
multiple listing service.
Photographic technology has progressed from
simple black and white images taken by a photographer
hired by the MLS to digital photography
and virtual tours shot, sometimes by professionals
but in many cases by the real estate agents themselves.
Along the way, the San Francisco
Association of REALTORS® was the first organization
in the Bay Area to implement online color
photographs for its listed properties in 1991.
The last fifteen years of Internet development
have transformed the real estate industry. In
1990, Tim Berners-Lee conceptualized the
World Wide Web. In 1993, Netscape produced
its first browser, to be answered by Microsoft
with Internet Explorer in 1995. In 1994, Yahoo
33
developed the first online directory, including a
basic search engine, and had developed into a
recognized portal to the Internet space by 1997.
The search engine function was further refined by
Google, beginning in 1998.
The National Association of REALTORS®
launched a public Internet site, www.realtor.com,
in 1997, giving consumers an online tool to help
them perform their own property searches and
connect with REALTORS® nationwide. The
National Association of REALTORS® also made
mandatory by January 2002 the implementation
of an Internet Data Exchange (IDX) policy that
allows MLS participants to display the available
listings of the MLS’s of which they are members
on their own websites. The current debate in the
industry revolves around the concept of the
“virtual office,” the ability for a broker to establish
an online presence with which to serve an
area, without having a “bricks and mortar” office
there.
Technological developments will take us
soon into completely paperless transactions.
Transaction documents can be prepared online,
transmitted as attachments to e-mail messages,
signed by applying electronic signatures, reviewed
on a screen in image form, and archived to a CD
when completed. State legislation is already in
place to permit electronic recording in county
recorders’ offices.
THE NEXT 100 YEARS
After reviewing the past 100 years of real estate
brokerage in San Francisco in the context of
what was happening in California and in the rest
of the United States, it is tempting to try to forecast
the future. We can be reasonably sure of the
following.
The ownership and development of real estate
will continue to be an excellent investment for
many people. The need for brokers to advise buyers
and sellers on real estate investment
opportunities will continue to exist. The availability
of real estate information online will make
buyers better educated before they establish
contact with a real estate broker. Increasing
disclosure obligations will make it less attractive
for sellers to try to represent themselves. The
value of the three levels of real estate trade associations,
not just to their own members, but to
property owners in general, will be enhanced as
government regulations and restrictions on property
rights increase.
Real estate brokerage companies have evolved
in the last twenty-five years into three categories:
the national “brand” company, which operates its
own offices or franchises the name; the local
independent company, which may have multiple
offices but operates primarily within one geographic
area; and the small “boutique” office,
perhaps with just one or two principals and limited
support staff. The challenge for the trade
associations is to continue to serve each of those
categories in an equitable manner. How well they
do that will determine the shape of organized real
estate in 2105.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Parry has been a full-time San Francisco real
estate broker since 1986. He has served three terms
as a director of the San Francisco Association of
REALTORS®, was named REALTOR® of the
Year in 1998, and served as its president in 2002.
He is a director of the California Association of
REALTORS® and also of its business technology
subsidiary, REBT, and he represents San Francisco’s
4,500 REALTOR® members as a director of the
National Association of REALTORS®.
David has written a column on Pacific Heights
architects for the New Fillmore neighborhood
newspaper since January 2001 and uploads the
articles to his website, www.classicSFproperties.com,
after publication. He was the only person who was a
board member of both the San Francisco Historical
Society and the Museum of the City of San Francisco
prior to the merger in November 2001.
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35
SAN FRANCISCO REAL ESTATE BOARD
PRESIDENTS 1905–51
SFREB/SFBOR/SFAR
PRESIDENTS 1952–2005
1905, 1906 – Josiah R. Howell
1907 – Edgar L. Hoag
1908, 1909 – Samuel G. Buckbee
1910, 1911 – George D. Toy
1912, 1913 – A. L. Harrigan
1914 – Samuel G. Buckbee
(resigned)
1914, 1915 – O. C. Stine
1916 – Samuel G. Buckbee
1917, 1918 – R. C. Newell
1919, 1920 – Louis H. Mooser
1921, 1922 – Colbert Coldwell
1923, 1924 – Harry B. Allen
1925, 1926 – George C. Boardman
1927, 1928 – Fred C. Boeckmann
1928, 1929 – Louis J. Pfau, Jr.
1930 – L. A. Weidenmuller
1931, 1932 – John A. Sullivan
1933 – Vincent F. Finigan
1933, 1934 – Charles W. Brock
1935, 1936 – W. P. Laufenberg
* 1936 – Chester MacPhee
1937, 1938 – W. O. Lang
* 1937 – William Traner
* 1938 – David F. Supple
1939 – W. P. Laufenberg
* 1939 – William J. Davis
1940, 1941 – Fred E. Palmer
* 1940 – W. Park Cunningham
* 1941 – Fred Braun
1942, 1943 – Vincent T. Mead
* 1942 – Mitchell E. Cutler
* 1943 – B. A. Bridges
1944, 1945 – George R. Roberts
* 1944 – Joseph Sala
* 1945 – James C. Kinard
1946, 1947 – James Hurst
* 1946 – Cleland O. Whitton
* 1947 – Walter Gordon
1948 – Willard L. Johnson
* 1948 – Max F. Robinson
1949 – Shepard S. Tucker
* 1949 – Allan F. Mori
1950 – Edward W. Arnold
* 1950 – Frank O. Renstrom
1951 – F. Burt Hulting
* 1951 – Alexander Cutler
* President, San Francisco Real
Estate Association (organized in
1935; agreement of merger with
the San Francisco Real Estate
Board ratified July 10, 1951)
1952 – Alexander Cutler
1953 – Kenneth H. Smitten
1954 – Lloyd D. Hanford
1955 – Fred Braun
1956 – J. Mortimer Clark
1957 – Peter G. Shields
1958 – Kenneth H. Smitten
1959, 1960 – Dale F. Farnow
1961 – William T. Hogan
1962 – Howard McGurrin
1963 – Mitchell E. Cutler
1964 – Richard E. Horberg
1965 – Albert Simmons
1966 – John Ritchie
1967 – Donald J. Gordon
1968 – Lincoln G. Holmgren
1969 – Richard S. Hyman
1970 – Clyde C. Cournale
1971 – O.A. (Bill) Talmage
1972 – Milton I. Mack
1973 – Michael F. McCormac
1974, 1975 – Frederic S. Freund
1976 – David F. Gallagher
1977 – Wallace Marinko
1978 – Robert H. Guggenheim
1979 – Robert C. Amore
1980 – Nicki Boberg
1981 – Ronald J. Strayer
1982 – Raymond I. Brown
1983 – Andrew H. Stone
1984 – Richard A. Bocci
1985 – Richard M. Sax
1986 – William L. Jansen
1987 – William C. Drypolcher
1988 – Grace J. Perkins
1989 – Victor G. Makras
1990 – Allen M. Okamoto
1991 – Helen Dawson
1992 – Al Clifford
1993 – Vincent E. Malta
1994 – Ronald E. Bansemer
1995 – John A. Christen
1996 – Joanne M. McEachern
1997 – Donald Q. Saunders
1998 – Charles E. Moore
1999 – Curt Cournale
2000 – Jeannie M. Anderson
2001 – Ric A. Rocchiccioli
2002 – David Parry
2003 – Timothy J. Cannon
2004 – Dona Crowder
2005 – John Yen Wong