Rules of Conduct for Relatives Who Work Together

Whether family members get along perfectly or enjoy a healthy sibling rivalry, working together in a real estate business can bring special rewards to relatives. A wealth of family relationships is represented in Northern Virginia real estate, from husband-and-wife teams to parent-and-child teams to siblings who work in the same brokerage. While going into business together sometimes happens serendipitously rather than as the result of a long-term plan, these local families who work together and relax together say they wouldn’t have it any other way.

MEET THE FAMILIES
Vinh Nguyen, broker/owner of Westgate Realty in Falls Church, has led his own brokerage for more than 20 years. It wasn’t until he had as many as 125 agents working for him that three of his sisters, Lieu Nguyen, Ava Nguyen and Bic DeCaro, and his nephew, Taylor Kaldahl, joined the business.

“Families who work together say the trust and knowledge they have of one another makes a great foundation for a business.”

“My parents were in business and invested in real estate, so that may be where our entrepreneurial interest comes from,” says Nguyen. “I started in real estate after I got my master’s degree in economics and realized that I found office and government work dull. My sisters all have managerial experience, but so far all three want to stay as sales agents rather than join the management side of the brokerage.”

Ryan Nicholas, a Realtor® with the DamonSellsHomes Team with Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Fairfax, says that while the team bears his father’s name, it was actually his mother who was the first in the family to go into real estate. Damon Nicholas followed his wife into real estate after she had been in business for a couple of years.

“My mother stepped back a little and just worked on lead development while my siblings and I were growing up, and now she’s back to working with clients again,” says Nicholas. “I got a job in sales after college and was promoted to district manager, but my dad kept saying that everything I was learning was related to real estate. I finally decided that I should try out working with them and it’s been a great experience.” 

Nicholas says that while it’s always great to have a mentor or a coach at work, “having your parents as your coaches is even better. It’s like having a personal sounding board.”

Sue Goodhart, with the Goodhart Group at McEnearney Associates in Alexandria, got into real estate with her husband Marty as a side business to the furniture business they already owned. They quickly realized that real estate was something they wanted to do together full-time.

“Marty’s a back-office type person, and I’m the front-office type person who loves to be out meeting people all the time,” says Goodhart. “Our daughter Allison helped us out sometimes during the summer and basically learned every role in the business. She started out as an assistant and then got her license while she was in college. She joined us full-time when she graduated.” This year, Allison was named by Realtor® Magazine as one of its “30 Under 30” honorees.

Goodhart credits her daughter with helping the business grow, keeping everyone organized and training the staff while selling real estate.
Hans and Steve Wydler, a team of brothers who work in Northern Virginia, D.C. and Maryland, always thought they might go into business together someday, but real estate wasn’t part of the plan until Hans Wydler got involved in the field.

Hans Wydler, an associate broker with The Wydler Brothers Team with Long & Foster Real Estate in Bethesda, started out in the media business and then three Internet start-up companies, until he caught the real estate bug 14 years ago. His brother Steve Wydler, also an associate broker with The Wydler Brothers Team, says he “made fun of my older brother for a few years for going into real estate until I realized what a good business it is. I quit my job as a practicing attorney and worked as a real estate agent for a year before we joined forces and became a team.”

Both of the Wydlers’ wives work behind the scenes to support the business, too.
“I went to business school and Steve went to law school, so we make a good team,” says Hans Wydler. “We know each other so well and understand how the other thinks. We love the collaborative process and sharing ideas.” 

Gail Belt, the matriarch of The Belt Team with Keller Williams Realty in McLean, and her husband Jerry Belt have been in real estate for more than 40 years. Jerry Belt joined her real estate team after retiring from the federal government, and their children Terry and Christy joined the team after working in commercial real estate and mortgage banking. 

“We each worked on our own before joining the team, which I think is important to our success,” says Terry Belt, CEO of the team. “Even though I was in commercial real estate and Christy ran seven mortgage bank offices, the door was always open to join our mom’s team.” 
The Belt Team has 10 members, four of whom are family members.

“The family members are the core of the team and we establish the values and the commitment to integrity for the whole team,” says Christy Belt Grossman, COO of the team. “It’s absolutely great to be able to work with people you like and trust and who share common values.”

ADVANTAGES OF WORKING WITH RELATIVES
Families who work together say the trust and knowledge they have of one another makes a great foundation for a business.

“One of the best things about working with my husband and my daughter is that we know the business will be handled in the way we want,” says Goodhart. “We share the same philosophy of service to our clients and to our community.”

The Wydler brothers say that the complete trust they have in each other and shared values and objectives add to the strength of their business. Steve Wydler adds that even when they disagree they still know that their underlying principles are intact. 

“Real estate is a deal-based business, and even though we’re co-owners of the business, we don’t work on the same deals,” he says. “We can get advice from each other and support each other while staying independent as agents.”

“One drawback to being brothers as well as business partners is that when we’re working out our differences there’s less of a filter.”

Terry Belt says one of the best things about working in a family business is that “you always know you’ve got each other’s back. There’s no hidden agenda because of the trust we have in the family.”

“One of the biggest advantages for me, especially in the beginning of my career, was the opportunity to live with my parents and be there for the things you don’t learn in a classroom,” says Nicholas. “I could listen in on late night calls and contract discussions that often take place in the evening at home.”
Nguyen adds that family members tend to hold each other to higher standards and have a healthy ability to criticize each other.

OH BROTHER – THE CHALLENGES OF WORKING WITH RELATIVES
While most family members see nothing but positive outcomes from working together, relatives who do so need to take a deliberate approach to keeping work at work during family gatherings. Nguyen says that business “stays at the office” for the most part, especially any problems that need to be addressed, although sometimes opportunities get mentioned when the family is socializing. 

The Belt family members established ground rules so that they don’t talk about real estate at their family gatherings.
“We’ve consciously decided that we need to separate our work and life discussions,” says Nicholas. “My Dad will often start out by saying ‘speaking as your Dad’ or ‘speaking as your coach’ so I know whether he’s giving me personal advice or business advice.”

When Nicholas had his first real estate transaction, he says his parents were extremely excited. He suggested that they treat him as another professional, not as parents who were proud of their kid.
It can be challenging to stop family dynamics from seeping into the workplace. 

“One drawback to being brothers as well as business partners is that when we’re working out our differences there’s less of a filter,” says Hans Wydler. “We’re more likely to be less civil with each other than we are with other people, but then again, we make up quickly after an argument, too.”
Steve Wydler says the brothers know each other’s hot points and can get to flashpoints faster than if they were purely professional colleagues. 

“A silly example is that when we first became a team we shared an expensive camera and this created friction because the camera was never where we needed it to be,” says Hans Wydler. “It’s so easy to go back to acting like little kids, but in that case we were able to get a second camera so we would stop arguing about it.”

Terry Belt says family members need to manage their expectations and realize that being part of a team can mean getting less attention for their personal success.
“I’ve been in the business for 28 years now, but on some level I will always be Gail Belt’s son,” says Terry Belt. “I realized early on that it would be that way and that it doesn’t matter, you just have to put your ego aside.” 

Grossman said her family adjusted their personal interactions as the team has grown. For example, her father now reports to her instead of to her mother. 
The attitudes of others on the team who are not family members also need to be considered. 

“I recently had an agent call me to complain that I give all the good leads to my sisters, but I definitely don’t do that,” says Nguyen. “I give leads to people who are successful and have built a good business no matter who they are. My sisters have done that on their own without any help from me.”

Nicholas says he works even harder because he wants to make his parents proud and also because he wants to prove to others that he’s there because of his talent, not because he’s being handed things as the son of the business owners. 
“It’s extra motivation to do well,” he says.

One drawback to working with close relatives is the extra challenge of trying to take a vacation together – something that’s always a little difficult for people in a career that requires attention 365 days a year.

“We’ve worked hard to build the business so that we can take a vacation together,” says Goodhart. “There’s no question it’s hard to have three people from a six-person office gone at the same time, but we try to be thoughtful about how we can be out at the same time.” 

SUCCESSION PLANNING KEEP IT IN THE FAMILY
While Sue and Marty Goodhart aren’t ready to retire anytime soon, they take great satisfaction in knowing that their daughter can run the business when they are ready to slow down.

“Having Allison as part of the business has made us want to do even better, to build our business even more so that it can run well whether Marty and I are part of it or not,” says Goodhart.

The Wydler brothers have a written operating agreement in place that describes how the two share revenue and expenses and what will happen to the business in the future.

“Our agreement spells out what will happen if one of us wants to retire or change careers or if someone becomes incapacitated,” says Steve Wydler. “We have a buy-sell agreement and key man insurance in place.”
Grossman says The Belt Team has a written plan to transition the business from her parents to herself and her brother. 

“We worked with an outside coach to start the conversation about how the business would be run,” says Grossman. “We don’t have family members waiting in the wings to succeed us, but we have had conversations about selling the business someday in the distant future if other family members don’t want it.”

Being related to a successful Realtor® offers a valuable opportunity to learn the business within a safe environment, surrounded by the most trustworthy people you know: your family.