Profile: Gregg Antonsen

By: Paul Weideman
Published online: Sunday, January 01, 2012
Appeared in: Home, Santa Fe Real Estate Guide
Edition: January 2012 Vol. 14 No. 10

Gregg Antonsen is qualifying broker for Sotheby’s International Realty in Santa Fe. Home|Santa Fe Real Estate Guide found him at the Sotheby’s office in the historic Judge Reed Holloman house on Grant Avenue.

You’ve been doing this for about five months now?

I’ve been in this position for five months. What most people don’t know is that I’ve been in Santa Fe for nine years on January 3. I’m getting my feet wet.

I started in Hawaii with own real-estate firm and that included some work with Sotheby’s back in 1979, 1980, 1981. Most recently, for the last eight years, I was with Christies’ Great Estates [now Christie’s International Real Estate]. I was their senior vp of business development. I met Kay Coughlin in Hawaii. She was heading the Sotheby’s West Coast division.

The job description was more about management than working with properties and agents?

With Christie’s I was working more on a national level. I would oversee regional vice presidents and also helped to grow that network. I would be called out on special properties, usually $10 million and above, to assist the local broker, who was a Christie’s affiliate, to bring high-end properties on to the market.

But here it’s getting back to my roots. My firm in Hawaii was a boutique brokerage and what I like about Sotheby’s, and what Sotheby’s has become, is that we’re local experts in all price ranges. The beauty is they get the Sotheby’s service no matter what price range they’re at, and Sotheby’s is known historically for their high level of service and integrity and value.

In this economy, Sotheby’s is representing the whole spectrum, and brokers tell me they’re working harder on each transaction than ever before.

What this market has shown us is that you can’t ignore any sector of the market. In Santa Fe we have a 36 percent market share looking at all price ranges and 60 percent of the sales volume for sales of $1 million and up. I love working with all these people. There’s a reason they have the market share they do.

In November 2010, this company bought Santa Fe Realty Partners, a locally grown business, and that firm’s chief, Tommy Gardner, was named designated broker at Sotheby’s, replacing Darci Burson. After that acquisition, the company had 180 brokers. How many are here now?

I believe we have 115. There will be ebbs and flows, but our goal is to be the number-one firm in Santa Fe, the local experts. What differentiates us is the international reach that we have and it’s because of the name and the association with the auction house.

Everyone likes to support local business; that’s a very important thing. But at the same time we’re in an ever-shrinking world, so you need that national and international reach. I think Santa Fe is very unique and is recognized nationally and internationally as a center of the arts and for the climate and the architecture. But people are drawn to brands and what we can bring to our sales associates is the brand and the business that comes with it.

What’s your projection for business in 2012?

My experience is not unique, but I talk with leaders in the banking industry, and I just attended an address by Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, and he spoke about Santa Fe. I see 2012 as being somewhat of a static year. I see the next few years as somewhat stable.

Have we reached the bottom on prices?

I think we have, or we’re very close to it. Sales in Santa Fe were up 2.7 percent in 2011 versus 2010. The third-quarter median price was down roughly 10.5 percent. I think when you put everything together, you see that prices are slowly stabilizing.

Lawrence Yun calls this “a strange new world.” We have the lowest interest rates in 40 years but very little pickup in sales. We have relatively little new construction, but existing homes continue to lose value. These are things that haven’t happened before. Banks have huge cash reserves but their stock prices are low. Homes are very affordable, but there’s a general lack of confidence.

And, lately, just as we begin to feel a little better about our economy, we get the news from Europe. It’s very difficult to make predictions.

After everything hit the fan in September 2008, it seemed that the complexity of derivatives and other financial structures actually obscured productive analysis and repair of the system.

The complexity combined with the thought processes that said certain banks and institutions were too big to fail made a dangerous situation. I think the subprime crisis was the first faltering, and Canada is an interesting contrast. My understanding is that they went through this in the 1980s and quickly took control of it and learned from it. Right now you go to Montreal and Toronto and Vancouver and you see building cranes, and you’re not seeing them here.

It is a strange new world, but I am the eternal optimist. We have seen a slight improvement this year over last and I think we will continue to see slight improvement in 2012, but I think it’s going to be a slow walk out of this through 2015.