Keeping the business in the family
Philadelphia Traction Co. had just cut the hours of longtime employee and Havertown resident Joseph Wagner Sr., who immediately began looking for a way to make up the lost income.
Philadelphia Traction Co. had just cut the hours of longtime employee and Havertown resident Joseph Wagner Sr., who immediately began looking for a way to make up the lost income.
His solution: selling real estate and insurance, opening an office on Darby Road and partnering, in 1930, with Joe Wilson.
Fast-forward to 2015.
A. Graham Wagner Jr., who joined Wagner Real Estate when he graduated from Miami University of Ohio in 1972, decided he needed a break from the day-to-day and sold the business his grandfather had founded 86 years ago.
Unlike many family-run real estate firms, which "merge" with the mega-brokerages, Wagner Real Estate was sold to Tyler and Clay Wagner, Graham's sons.
The decision, effective Jan. 1, came at the end of two record-setting years, Graham said.
"I will still list and sell, but I am 'the consultant,' " he said. "It will give me more freedom."
Of the Wagners, only Joseph Sr. went into real estate on purpose, so to speak.
Graham's father, Arthur G. Wagner Sr., took over the business in 1936 at age 18, after Joseph Sr. died unexpectedly. His mother; his brother Joseph Jr., a medical student who eventually became a cardiologist at Bryn Mawr Hospital; and his sister Florence, then still in school, pitched in.
"My grandmother and aunt ran the business when my father and Uncle Joe went into the service in World War II," Graham Wagner said.
Their building at 2100-08 Darby Rd. was purchased during the war.
"It was a foreclosure owned by the Philadelphia Contributionship [a property-insurance company], and my father and uncle sent their service pay home to buy it," he said.
Growing up, he had little to do with the business, "other than being taken to open houses when my father couldn't find a babysitter."
"We heard about it at the dinner table," he said.
Real estate was also dinnertime conversation to Clay and Tyler Wagner, although when the business gave out calendars, "they would run door to door delivering them," their father said.
They also starred in a commercial in which they drove a little car to look at a tree house for sale.
Graham Wagner graduated with a degree in business administration, and like many in his generation, "I wanted to find myself."
His father suggested he find himself "at the door to the office."
Clay Wagner, 38, a 2000 graduate of Moravian College, majored in economics and elementary education and pursued a teaching career before getting his real estate license in 2004.
Tyler Wagner, 35, a 2002 Miami University graduate, worked as a systems auditor for Deloitte & Touche and then for Merrill Lynch and decided "it was not my cup of tea."
He bought a house in Havertown, which accounts for 50 percent of Wagner Real Estate's business, and joined the firm at the end of 2004.
A large part of the business is based in Hershey's Mill, where three of their 35 agents live and sell.
The sales group was started by Graham's late Aunt Florence, who moved to Hershey's Mill in 1987.
Shortly after his sons came on board, the real estate downturn arrived.
"It was the first time I'd seen a negative market," Graham Wagner said. "I never thought it would last so long."
Said Tyler: "When the big banks went down in 2008, the phones went completely silent."
The down market allowed all three to "be involved" in real estate associations and other endeavors. Since 2013, the market has shown definite improvement, Tyler said.
"People became more conservative with their money and saved enough of it to move on," he noted.
These days, interest rates are low, more people are employed, and those who lost houses through foreclosure from 2007 to 2010 will be eligible to buy again, the Wagners said.
The new generation of owners hopes to grow the business, adding more offices and agents.
"Small firms are more hands-on," Tyler Wagner said. "Clients really like that approach."
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