Joe Scozzafava
Title: Luxury Property Specialist, William Raveis
Age: 68
Experience: 9 years
After a long career in marketing for companies that included Apple, Hewlett Packard and Xerox, Joe Scozzafava turned his talents to real estate. Growing up in Fairfield County and raising his family there make it the perfect place to apply his interest in architecture and his passion for marketing. He and his wife are avid travelers and recently returned from a trip to the Middle East, where they visited Dubai, Jordan and Israel. He said the best advice he ever got came from his first real estate manager, who told him, “In real estate, people like to do business with people they can relate to. Be yourself, be honest and listen carefully to what your clients say.”
Q: How did you get into real estate?
A: I got into real estate part-time initially between 2009 and 2011, doing weekend stuff with a small boutique firm to learn the business and to see if it was what I wanted to do. I wanted to learn and test the waters. I believed in the enduring nature of the real estate market and the old Mark Twain quote, “Buy land. They’re not making it anymore.”
I’ve relocated across the country and locally and had a lot of experience buying and selling homes. I thought most of the agents I dealt with just drove around and showed me houses; there wasn’t a lot of interesting and creative marketing going on. That’s changed the real estate industry in the last 10 years. I was pleasantly surprised to find some agents using technology and doing creative things, and I felt that I had some talent to bring to the business, especially with my background in marketing and technology. After so many years in the corporate world, I wanted to do something entrepreneurial. The cost of getting into it is relatively low compared to the potential.
Q: What has surprised you so far?
A: I didn’t see the degree to which technology would change things. In 2009, when I started, there were still MLS books. They stopped printing them about two years later. Since I got into the business particularly with the Millennials, they do all the research themselves. They don’t want us to do it. They don’t contact an agent until they find what they want. They know agents bring value to the process and you need to be careful how you process transactions. While you can do a lot of research online and look at photos, but you really don’t know the area unless you’ve been there. Understanding our markets brings a lot of value to these transactions. They rely on me more after they’ve started working together.
I coach them. Typically, they don’t want to do any work on the house before they move in. They’re used to apartment living. It can be a rude awakening sometimes. In lower Fairfield County we get a lot of homebuyers coming out of Manhattan. Often a first home will cost between $800,000 and $900,000, and there isn’t a lot of money left over. I recommend home inspectors who really teach them about the house. That is a big advantage to the Millennials.
Q: How did you differentiate yourself from the pack getting started in a competitive and mature market?
A: It’s not easy to break into this business. I did it at a different stage of life than a lot of people. It’s hard if you’re younger and you need cash flow. My kids were out of college and if I needed to spend a year doing this without an income, I could. I had the luxury of time to develop a client base. If they’re happy with you, they refer their friends. That’s how you grow a business. You don’t put pressure on your clients to buy or sell. You discuss the logistics and if they don’t feel like you’re pressuring them to do anything, you become their trusted advisor. You’re able to look out for their best interests and it comes through.
Q: What do you bring from your career in high tech to your real estate practice?
A: Certainly my comfort level with technology. Real estate is an industry that people can work in when they’re quite old. You can do this in your 70s and 80s if you’re healthy. A lot of people in that age bracket aren’t comfortable with technology. Being able to use technology to create marketing material and do online research and communicate with clients the way they want to communicate. With Millennials, you have to text. They don’t respond to voicemail and emails. Once you get in front of them, you can talk, but otherwise it’s texting. The MLS and databases are all technology. Using video and 3D rendering and virtual staging of homes. You have to be comfortable with it and not everybody is.
Q: Do most of your homebuyers commute to New York City?
A: Roughly half of them do. Previous generations always felt like you got married, work a couple years and buy a house. Today, that’s not a given. When young couples start to have children, they start looking at schools. Then they start coming out to the suburbs and they want schools, parks and programs. We’re lucky in this area where we have that infrastructure in place. Many buyers work in Manhattan, but there’s been an exodus of financial institutions and there are a lot of hedge funds in Fairfield County now. Many people do a reverse commute because they don’t want to leave the excitement of the city. People also commute to White Plains.
Q: Is your market strong right now?
A: There has been strength in the high end in the past six to 12 months, which is interesting. That has to do with the major price correction we had. Houses that once sold for between $7 million and $8 million are now selling for between $4 million and $5 million. There are great values out there for buyers. There is a trend away from the 8,000-square-foot McMansion toward a 4,000- to 5,000-square-foot house with high-quality amenities. Those houses are selling. In New Canaan, our sales were way up but our median price was down about 5 percent. It’s been falling since 2011. We’re kind of stable now. Sellers have reconciled themselves to the new reality. Inventories are down.
Q: Has New Canaan fully recovered from the real estate crash?
A: I would say it’s a cautious recovery. We’re still very concerned about the state economy and how business-friendly the state is. General Electric leaving was a good thing. It didn’t have that much of an impact. It isn’t the company it was 10 years ago. It wasn’t like a mass exodus of people in Fairfield, but the optics of that move were impactful and got people to wake up and pay attention. Aetna and Stanley Tools are leaving now and we can’t afford to have that happen. We have a very activist group running the CT Realtors now. We have a very active network. We’re the largest trade organization in the state, with 16,000 members. We’re taking stronger positions and making our case.
I think we’re going to see some modest growth in 2018. Anecdotally, the activity level is quite high. Agents are having a lot of listing presentations and conversations with potential sellers. Buyers are very active. They were waiting to see what has going to happen. Agents are very active and hopefully that will turn into sales. We had quite a few pending sales in New Canaan. We’re going to have good numbers. We are going to see price stability and modest growth in the market.
Fairfield is more diverse than people think. People associate Fairfield County with Greenwich, New Canaan and Darien. Stamford is a major city with all the things a major city has to offer. Fairfield is also diverse. It’s really not what people might think of as the playground for the wealthy. Coastal communities are exclusive, but there are a lot of opportunities for the middle class.
Scozzafava’s Five Favorite Travel Destinations:
- Nantucket
- Tuscany
- Paris
- Dubai
- Sydney
