LBI Realtor: I change my billboard photo, why don't the others?
BEACH HAVEN WEST, N.J. - There's a view of the causeway bridge over her shoulder, and her rescue Chihuahua Lucy is ready as always for the close-up. Never mind that Lucy, without her consent, is being dropped from the billboard photo, ears and all.
BEACH HAVEN WEST, N.J. - There's a view of the causeway bridge over her shoulder, and her rescue Chihuahua Lucy is ready as always for the close-up. Never mind that Lucy, without her consent, is being dropped from the billboard photo, ears and all.
Stacy Janzer, 46, Long Beach Island Realtor and part of a builder family, Team J - or, as the license plate on her black Mercedes SUV says, because the proper spelling was already taken when she went to Motor Vehicles, Teem J - is replacing the photo on her "Got Realtor?" billboard, signs, flags, cards, everything, because that's what Stacy Janzer always does.
"It always annoys me that you see a Realtor on billboards and the picture is from 20 years ago," Janzer says. "I run into them and it's like, 'Who are you?' I hate that. People are, like, 'Aren't you embarrassed to put your picture on a billboard?' No. Because everybody knows Stacy Janzer."
And that is everything in the competitive world of Long Beach Island Realtors - just look at Realtor Pattie Romano, better known as the cat lady.
Everybody knows the cat lady from the graffitied whiskers and black circles around her eyes that were scrawled on her Bay Avenue billboard, by the last turnoff from the island.
For years, no matter how many times Romano replaced it or washed it off, somebody graffitied whiskers and circles back, and she just went with it. It earned her Facebook hits, so she just owned it.
Now, the billboard of Pattie Romano is a thing on the way to Long Beach Island - and, well, all power to her. On this episode of Real Realtors of LBI, everyone's out for an angle.
Not that Janzer, Northeast Philly girl that she was back before the LBI move, would ever be caught leaving unflattering whiskers and black circles on a billboard photo of herself, though she, like other Realtors - including Theresa "Make the RIGHT (in an arrow) Move with" Jensen, Janzer's colleague in the Mary Allen Realty office in Ship Bottom - acknowledge Romano does some excellent business.
"I'm a little too vain for that," Janzer says.
Truth is, the original reason Janzer put Lucy the Chihuahua on the billboard is to remind people to think about their pets in another storm such as Sandy. Many left pets behind.
"No dog left behind," the billboard was going to say.
Having already dodged Romano's cat-lady fate, for a time Janzer was contemplating an identity as "the dog lady." In the end, she just let Lucy's epic cuteness speak for itself. Who would leave that face behind even for a second?
Headquartered just off the causeway, the better to catch your business as you drive toward LBI, the high-energy Janzer and her deferential but busy builder husband Darryl know the volatility of real estate, where 10 minutes' difference in location can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in property values, and where Sandy jolted the landscape forever.
Where any house that survived Sandy, even if it's been remediated, or was barely touched, could lose its value as time goes on, Janzer believes.
Where post-Sandy teardowns, new construction, elevations mean that Beach Haven West, for second homeowners, is nearly indistinguishable in value from parts of LBI.
"It's becoming a little Hamptons," Janzer says of Beach Haven West, an interconnecting network of first-name named streets along a series of lagoons where nearly every house is on the water with a dock, some less than 10 minutes out to the bay.
It used to be Long Beach Island was Philly. Now, it's 60 percent New Yorkers.
"Half the people that I build for are New York and North Jersey, and they're like, 'You don't know what a bagel or a pizza tastes like,' " Janzer says.
"In the '70s, it was all Philly," says Jensen, looking beachy behind her desk at the Mary Allen office in Ship Bottom, where Janzer has stopped in.
Mary Allen is an office anchored by local talent.
Janzer is the transplant.
Jensen, 52, whose parents owned Wida's hotel in Brant Beach - now a boutique hotel called Daddy O's - has unsurpassed local cred.
Asked if people ever confuse Realtor Janzer with Realtor Jensen, Janzer quickly says no, Jensen quickly says yes, and the matter remains unresolved, a tad awkwardly.
Janzer pulls no punches.
Truth is, she's rarely in the Mary Allen office, a former Century 21 office rebranded in a lush orange color by Randy Sinor, son of the founder.
Janzer began with the obligatory stint in rentals ("Who's up? You're up" to the calls) but now works from the office she shares with her husband off Mill Creek Road, near a perfectly nice bagel place.
The agents she likes, such as Andi Haseman, rental specialist, "have the biggest heart."
As for others, "in this business you have a lot of catty, cheating, lying real estate salesmen," she says. "I'm sorry, I'll just tell you the truth."
Mary Allen Realtors say they can find you a house, condo, or rental at a range of prices, not just the multimillion-dollar ones on LBI's north end, where streets are marked "Private: No Beach Access" (though they'll gladly show you those as well). Realtors on that end are more fancy than beachy.
"When you walk in, all the furniture is Ethan Allen, the chandelier hanging out," Janzer says. "If you go south, we're just more down-to-earth."
Janzer, a mother of two teenage boys, moved to Jersey a dozen years ago from Langhorne after she and her husband decided to build a house in Beach Haven West, a community they found by accident. Relocation beckoned.
Her parents took her to Ventnor and Margate ("where the Jews went," she says), but she's found home just over the bridge from LBI.
"She's far from a shoobie," says Sinor, approvingly.
Each season, Janzer Builders constructs a spec house to show people what they might get for $600,000. Stacy Janzer sits there weekends, trying to help people see themselves in new construction.
Back at the Ship Bottom office, 50 sets of rental keys are ready to go on agent Lois Dornan's desk.
A case of "Beach House" brand sauvignon blanc sits on agent Christine Johnson's desk - one for every renter - good angle!
Later in the summer, rentals will triple, and no matter how many times they say check in is at 2 p.m., families will line up at 1 or before, begging to be allowed in early. (The answer is always no.)
With some LBI rentals going for $10,000 a week (oceanfront in Loveladies, in prime weeks), agents are very welcoming.
Only Jon Bon Jovi got the courtesy of having the keys delivered to him at his rental property, says Sinor.
Supposedly Bruce Springsteen has taken a rental or two. This year, it's all very hush-hush about one VIP until someone says, "Oh the Chopper Guy!"
In truth, the catty, chatty, cat-lady-run world of Long Beach Island and Beach Haven West real estate got pretty serious in 2012, when Sandy devastated neighborhoods, toppled multimillion-dollar homes, and forced lots of "old money" and people with family beach homes to cut their losses and leave, sell "as is," or, for some, do nothing but wait on insurance payments.
"Everybody was running on emotion," Janzer says, recalling the days and even months after Sandy.
She counseled people to hold on to properties as long as they could, demolish the house to save on taxes, and let property values rise around them.
Now, she sees hundreds of rebuilt homes, some built on elevated concrete foundations, some lifted and still recognizable from before Sandy, some rebuilt from scratch, others as prefabs. The change in the community just off the causeway is striking, as wealthier families are buying second homes, seeing a place to dock the boat, not quite but almost on Long Beach Island.
Her own home, with empty Sandy properties on both sides, has only become more valuable.
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