In many ways, New York City is a bellwether for the rest of the country. Whether it be music, art, fashion, or real estate trends, chances are that if it’s happening in your city now, it happened in New York six months ago. If you want to check the pulse of the real estate industry, New York City would be the place to start.
That’s why we sat down with top-producing Manhattan agent, Nicole Beauchamp, to get her take on the state of the industry. We talked about how technology is changing how agents work, housing trends, and finally, how the recent Black Lives Matter movement might change our industry for the better.
Sean Moudry:
Hello, The Close listeners, it’s Sean Moudry. We’re here with The Close and we are here with Nicole Beauchamp, with Engel & Völkers in Manhattan, New York. Welcome.
Nicole Beauchamp:
Thank you, thank you. It’s exciting to be here.
Sean Moudry:
Wonderful. So, I was looking into your bio a little bit and you’re relatively—I don’t want to say you’re new to real estate—but 2014 wasn’t that long ago. What got you into real estate?
Nicole Beauchamp:
Well, actually, 2014 is when I made the move to Engel & Völkers. I’ve actually been in real estate for almost 20 years now.
Sean Moudry:
Oh, I read that wrong.
Nicole Beauchamp:
If you can imagine that! It feels like just yesterday that people were asking me why on earth would I want to be able to check my email when I’m not sitting at my desk?
Sean Moudry:
Yeah.
Nicole Beauchamp:
Now 20 years later, all we do is check our email from our phones when we’re walking around, and as long as we’re awake.
Sean Moudry:
That’s right. Now, you have a background in technology, right? Is that—
Nicole Beauchamp:
Yep.
Sean Moudry:
Yeah, tell us—
Nicole Beauchamp:
That’s correct. So, my undergraduate background is in computer science and economics, and I did some sort of—I would call it top-level software design. I wasn’t very good at coding. I didn’t love it, but I was a person that could interface between the tech people and the business side. So, it was kind of like being a—
Sean Moudry:
Genius.
Nicole Beauchamp:
A translator. A translator in a way. Mainly I was one of the few people on most tech teams that was OK with actually going and walking over to someone to talk about something, versus sitting next to each other and sending messages back and forth. That didn’t make any sense to me. I’m like, “You’re sitting next to me. We can talk.” I did that for—oh god, I’m getting older than I think—for almost 20 years.
I was born and raised here in New York, so any environment that I’ve been in people have always asked me, “OK, I’m coming to visit New York. What should I do? Where should I stay?” “I think I’m being transferred to New York. Where should I live? What should I do?” I would give my examples of having grown up here. It’s like, “Hey, it’s not so bad. You can actually be born and raised here and turn out well.” People always think that it’s superexpensive, you have to go to private school. I went to public school in New York City. My sisters went to private school.
Nicole Beauchamp:
I would send them to a friend of mine who was a real estate agent and say, “OK. I gave you my opinion as a lifelong New Yorker. Go talk to Jane and she will help you rent, she’ll help you buy, all that fun stuff.” This happens repeatedly over the years, and she eventually says, “You need to get your license so at least I can pay you a referral fee.” I go, “It’s good. I just want people to be well taken care of and have someone that they can trust who can work on their behalf to get them the home that they want.” She goes, “Think about it. It’s like a finder’s fee. It’s like the same thing when you’re putting companies together.” I resisted for a very long time, and then finally I caved because she said, “You know what? You paid for my car. Your referrals paid for my car this year.” OK, fine.
Nicole Beauchamp:
I get to a point where I’m feeling exhausted and worn down because all I feel like I’m doing is I’m working all the time. I would walk into my office and I could get handed a plane ticket and told, “OK, goodbye. Go to London for three days to work with a client.” That was hard to keep some kind of a work/life balance so I thought, “Well, maybe I’ll try selling real estate and I will have control over my life in some way. It’s just like starting a new business.” I was right about the “It’s just like starting a new business.” The extent to which the work/life balance—that’s gone back and forth, but I still think of it as the best decision I’ve made. It did enable me to make decisions to be present for my family at a time when my parents needed me most. I was able to be there in a very flexible way because I was in this business.
Sean Moudry:
That’s outstanding. That’s outstanding, so 20 years. I apologize for that. I read the bio wrong.
Nicole Beauchamp:
No worries, no worries.
Sean Moudry:
Yeah.
Nicole Beauchamp:
No worries, that means I’m younger. I’m good with that.
Sean Moudry:
You’re younger. Yeah, I understand. So, I notice also in your bio that you have a lot of education in real estate. I have 26 years in the business and you have at least four or five times the amount of education. It looks like education in real estate is extremely important to you.
Nicole Beauchamp:
Well, I think that education in general is extremely important. That was a core part of the values of my family when we were growing up. I mean, I could just as often be found with my nose in a book when I was a kid. So, I’ve always been very interested in learning and exploring new things.
Sean Moudry:
Yeah. That’s great. Your bio, your resume is amazing. So, obviously there’s a lot going on in the economy today, the market today, the real estate market. New York obviously is on the head of every headline. I feel like Cuomo is my mayor or my governor.
Nicole Beauchamp:
I get messages from people who are like, “I just love watching your governor every day.” Up until the beginning of this month, we weren’t really leaving our apartment building unless we absolutely had to, because I’ve got my elderly father who’s with me. So, we wanted to keep him as insulated as possible, and thank god for delivery services and Instacart, and all of those wonderful people who were working every day so that I could stay home and make sure that I could take care of my dad.
Sean Moudry:
That’s right. What a lucky time we’re in that we have the technology to be able to still live in a quarantine, right? That was a really interesting thing to happen at the same time.
Nicole Beauchamp:
It’s really, really amazing, and it’s amazing not only how technology enables us to continue to live, but if we have the ability—if we’re not in an essential role—it enables us to stay connected to other people. My friends are all over the world. My clients are scattered everywhere. My family, much of the family is local but I have nieces who live in other states. My sister lives across the street. The last time I saw my sister in person may have been in—I want to say April when she came over to drop something off. The last time I saw her on a screen was on Friday because we did a family Zoom for my birthday.
Sean Moudry:
Yeah. You could meet her at the grocery store.
Nicole Beauchamp:
Now that we are going out for little walks, that’s kind of where we’re walking towards, but we’re all very concerned and mindful that we have an elderly parent that we want to keep as healthy as humanly possible so he can meet his latest great-grandchild, who just joined the family in March, in the middle of all of this. After the state of emergency in New York, but before the shutdown.
Sean Moudry:
Yeah, life goes—
Nicole Beauchamp:
Brand-new great-niece.
Sean Moudry:
Life marches on, right? It’s like Jurassic Park. Remember he said that you can’t stop life?
Nicole Beauchamp:
You can’t, you can’t.
Sean Moudry:
You can’t stop it. So, how has the pandemic specifically affected the real estate market, maybe for you or New York City? Has it directly affected you?
Nicole Beauchamp:
Well, in New York, we were not an essential business. The showings essentially shut down as of mid- to early March, and it is now June. It’s June whatever it is, and here in New York City I still can’t show property. We are in phase two of the reopen, and New York City just entered phase one on Monday, on June 8th.
Sean Moudry:
OK. Wow, so you still are not allowed to show leasing properties or homes for sale.
Nicole Beauchamp:
You can do things virtually. So, the closings are happening virtually. I closed something a couple of weeks ago that ironically, when I spoke to the owner at the listing appointment, the owner did not want to have to come back to New York. They always wanted a remote closing.
Sean Moudry:
Yeah.
Nicole Beauchamp:
I listed something for lease a couple of weeks ago. That was done entirely through a phone call with the owner, DocuSign the listing agreement, put it on the market, waiting for an application to come in. I’m putting something on the market soon that again, same thing. We’ve had conversations over the phone, we’ve had virtual listing presentations, send over the DocuSign agreements, get the agreements back. And DocuSign is not new. We’ve been using it for years, so I think that having a comfort level with these tools has been helpful. I’ve been on buyer presentations for new developments with clients the last couple of weeks as well.
Sean Moudry:
So, that was going to be my question: Do you see that what occurred in the pandemic—do you see that changing your business or even real estate in the future? Do you see changes to the industry?
Nicole Beauchamp:
I feel like we have adopted and embraced tools that perhaps we only used on a case-by-case basis in the past, maybe. Maybe you were only using DocuSign when you were not face to face with an owner across the kitchen table to get a listing signed. Maybe you were using that because your client lived out of the state or out of the country, and I think now we should be much more comfortable with these tools. They say it takes, what, 21 days to form a habit? We’ve been at this here in New York, what, 100 days?
Sean Moudry:
Yeah, three months. Yeah.
Nicole Beauchamp:
Three months.
Sean Moudry:
Three months.
Nicole Beauchamp:
That’s a long time.
Sean Moudry:
That’s a long time.
Nicole Beauchamp:
That’s a long time.
Sean Moudry:
So, are you going to implement any of these things into your business specifically—
Nicole Beauchamp:
Yes, for me—
Sean Moudry:
As a new process or a new standard for you?
Nicole Beauchamp:
For me, a lot of the tools were a part of the process already. They were always options that I’ve used with my clients. I’ve used FaceTime when I’m attending a home inspection because my clients were still in Europe. So, these things aren’t new for me, but I think the consumer also expects them now. I have a new buyer client, and one of the first conversations after the initial email exchange was not, “Let’s set up a conference call,” it was, “Let’s set up a Zoom so that we can see each other and we can screen share.”
Nicole Beauchamp:
So I think that that will be a key part of the process, a more frequent part, and I also think that it’s going to be more helpful to have lots of the conversations and the qualifying conversations earlier on so that we can narrow and really define the process, narrow the target properties. Then really decide, “OK, yes. These are the three properties that fit my criteria and yes, I’ve seen the Matterport tour, and I’ve seen the video, and the listing agent,” or depending on which side I’m on, “Yes, I saw it when you’ve walked me through it in real-time. Now I’m ready to go and actually see it.”
Sean Moudry:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Massive time saver. I was thinking when you were talking, I was thinking about the change in a process of a listing. The prequalification completely upfront, kind of like a prelisting upfront, and then break out the—
Nicole Beauchamp:
Almost like a prelisting appointment, yeah. I think here in New York, in Manhattan, New York City, so much of our housing stock is co-ops. So, the financial qualifications of a buyer and understanding that is always very important, but I think that the fact is that we are going to spend so much more time in the conversation around the property and the conversations around setting up the access, because the guidelines for house showings should take place are still being formulated and put out there. So, who’s going to be at the showing? Who’s not going to be at the showing? How is all of that going to work out? Wearing gloves, wearing masks, what the sellers may or may not be comfortable with, what the building requires. I have a listing in a building that before the shutdown, they had stopped allowing nonresidents in, which included me as the broker even though the apartment was vacant. They said, “Well, if you talk to the owner and the owner talks to the super, because that apartment is vacant, we might be willing to let you in if you come in to just do a FaceTime showing.”
Sean Moudry:
Wow.
Nicole Beauchamp:
I said, “Well.” That was back in March. This was before everything really happened. I said to them, “Well, I already have a virtual tour that I had done when I took the listing.” So the potential buyer will look at the photos, they can also look at this 360-tour of the apartment that they can navigate from their phone, and after that then we can discuss if I have to come in and do something similar without them.
Sean Moudry:
Yeah.
Nicole Beauchamp:
So, that’s another layer—that each building is going to decide what it wants to do. My building hasn’t fully decided what they want to do and how they want to do it yet.
Sean Moudry:
Yeah, that’s an interesting layer. For those of us that are in the flyover states—I’m right outside of Boulder, Colorado—so can you explain to us what a co-op is?
Nicole Beauchamp:
So in a co-op, the building forms a corporation and each apartment has a certain number of shares that’s allocated to that apartment. So when you’re buying the apartment, you’re purchasing the number of shares that that apartment represents, and you receive what’s called a proprietary lease that gives you the rights to live in that apartment. There’s a board of directors that approves or turns down a potential purchase, so that board of directors governs what the building decides to do.
Sean Moudry:
Wow, very interesting. I haven’t seen those here.
Nicole Beauchamp:
It’s superinteresting. It’s superinteresting. I mean, we also have condos, which work the same way as they do everywhere else, and then we have your traditional rental apartments, and it’s definitely interesting. These buildings also, these co-op buildings, they decide how much you can finance versus not finance. So many of them will say, “20% down is the minimum for this building,” or “30%,” or “35%.” That’s why we need to have—we’ve always needed to have—these conversations, but I feel as if the increased amount of time that navigating and setting things up is going to take is going to mean more opportunities to have those conversations.
Sean Moudry:
That was great, because that was going to be my next question. If you’re a real estate agent in maybe Manhattan, maybe in Miami, maybe in Tulsa, Oklahoma, what advice would you give them right now regarding the current market?
Nicole Beauchamp:
I think people in real estate always love to say that real estate is local, and that is always 1,000% true. It’s also very situational on what an individual is going through, and I think that’s probably more true now than it has ever been. Listening to what your clients tell you about what their circumstances are, what their motivations are, what do they need, when do they need to accomplish it by, and really coming up with a plan and a strategy around that.
Nicole Beauchamp:
So, I think that taking this time to have those conversations is important, and I also feel that my experience over the last three months has been that when I’ve been on the phone with my clients, I feel like they are much more excited to talk to me because they’re happy to talk to someone they don’t live with.
Sean Moudry:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Nicole Beauchamp:
Right?
Sean Moudry:
I could see that.
Nicole Beauchamp:
So before, I was always trying to get them in the 10 minutes that they had between meetings or between, “OK, I’m in the car going to the airport. I’ve got five minutes before I have to board,” or whatever, and now every conversation is, “Hi. How are you? How are you doing?” Every conversation is longer, it’s deeper, it’s much more personal, and most of my clients I know really well already. Or they’ve been referred by someone that I know well, but the fact that this time has given us to kind of have more conversations has been superinteresting.
Sean Moudry:
Deeper conversations, I love that.
Nicole Beauchamp:
Deeper conversations, and virtual happy hours. I’ll get text messages that say, “Hey. So, homeschooling has been really, really exhausting and I need some adult time. So, when can we do a virtual happy hour?” It’s been an opportunity where I have clients—and I’ve always liked to do this—to have events for my clients in small groups where they can meet other people that they may have things in common with. It could be they both have toddlers. It could be that they’re both in corporate law, or they’re all in finance. So, this time has enabled me to do more of those little group meetings and everybody’s doing it via Zoom, and it’s been really, really interesting. I’m choosing to focus on something positive to come out of this.
Sean Moudry:
Positive, yeah. Yeah.
Nicole Beauchamp:
There’s a lot of negativity to focus on in the world.
Sean Moudry:
Yeah. Yeah. Let’s talk about the Black Lives Matter movement in Minnesota with George Floyd and the tragedy that happened there, and the massive response and impact around the world that has come from this. I’m curious. For you, obviously, in New York City, we see on TV there’s a lot of riots. As an African American woman yourself, I would love to hear your perspective on this and really, what can real estate agents do to be part of the change?
Nicole Beauchamp:
There have been a lot of really wonderful peaceful protests that have gone on. I think that in all things, because we’re in this news-bite environment, we often see one but we don’t see the other. So, there have been lots of wonderful really moving peaceful protests going on. I don’t know if it came across your radar, but last November there was the Newsday investigation that talked about disparities in the way that people of color were treated when they were looking for housing. The Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968, and 2018 was the 50th anniversary. To have, a year later, such a horrifying investigation come out that shows that these things are still, in fact, impacting people of color in this country. And just in general, one of the greatest sources of wealth and wealth-building is the acquisition of real estate. So as agents, we are bound by those fair housing rules and regulations and everybody has to be treated in the same way.
Nicole Beauchamp:
This is why when we go back to thinking about process, I am a big proponent of you have to ask everybody the same questions. New York has lots of protected categories and classes, but you have to be mindful that everybody is treated in the same way. Full stop—no matter gender, race, orientation—and that’s first and foremost. I think what’s interesting is that right now, it feels like we’re in a moment where hopefully change can actually happen, and the discussions are happening mostly openly and civil, and people actually want to learn. I mean, I’ve shared with a couple of friends over the last couple of days that I had experiences as a child, and there’s so many things that we haven’t always spoken about openly, and maybe now there’ll be open discussion and the awareness. Frankly, the amount of resources that people can get to educate themselves from their phones—that’s something we’ve never been able to experience. The Rodney King riots were in the early ’90s.
Sean Moudry:
’93 maybe? Somewhere [indistinct].
Nicole Beauchamp:
Right? ’92. ’92. In 1992, we didn’t have a small computer in our hand that could guide us to resources to understand what was going on in the world, or to read great books like the “Color of Law” that really go into redlining and steering. I think as agents especially, to understand the history of the industry and the history of what went on before 2020, can be really edifying.
Sean Moudry:
Yeah, I hadn’t heard of that book. I’m a reader, so I will purchase that book and read it.
Sean Moudry:
I’ve got to say for myself, I had to realize, I would say, it was my blindness to it, right? The information is right here, but I chose to look past it because it’s uncomfortable or it’s a difficult conversation, and now I feel OK talking about it, right?
Nicole Beauchamp:
Yeah, and I think it’s OK to be uncomfortable.
Sean Moudry:
Yeah.
Nicole Beauchamp:
I think that this is going to be a really ridiculous analogy, but I think of the times when I’ve been recovering from surgery or I’ve been in physical therapy, and working through to get to the other side. I feel like that’s where we are now, and how are we going to work together to get to the other side?
Sean Moudry:
Yeah.
Nicole Beauchamp:
I don’t have the luxury of not thinking about it. I don’t. It’s every day.
Sean Moudry:
Right.
Nicole Beauchamp:
I think the fact that there’s a collective moment of discomfort—and people are speaking to each other, they are sharing resources—I have seen a lot of awful things that people post on social media platforms, but I’ve also seen a lot of people saying, “Well, I am buying or I’m reading these books. I’m watching these movies.” Sharing that information with each other, and I think that’s where this moment can be really, really powerful and propel towards change.
Sean Moudry:
Yeah. The dialogue helps peel the onion and look at our concepts, or our family traditions, or the rules, or whatever that was permeated into us, and then the conversation allows us to then start looking at our own beliefs and say, “Is this true?” Right? “Is this true?” Yeah, one of the conversations we had on The Close is we were talking on one of the coaching calls, addressing the Black Lives Matter movement in relationship to fair housing. My initial response was, “I don’t see the correlation.” Chris, the other contributor, literally whipped out, “Let me show you a page. Here, here, here, and here.” It really opened my eyes that it is still a problem. It is still an issue nationally, locally, regionally, in our homes, outside of our homes.
Nicole Beauchamp:
It shouldn’t be, but it is.
Sean Moudry:
It is.
Nicole Beauchamp:
Every locality funds services in a different manner, but if services are being funded based on, let’s say, property taxes, and if the value of a property is higher, then obviously its property taxes are going to be higher, which means that that area is going to have more resources to fund necessary services. Then you have a different area with lower property values and lower property taxes, so it’s really, really fascinating when we look back at the history of it. They’re facts, and then the Newsday investigation—I watched a lot of the videos. It was really, really difficult to sit and watch, and that’s here in New York. Here in New York, we have revised fair housing laws and disclosures that go into effect, I think, in the next 10 days. That investigation happened and they did then take a real look. So, my hope is that we will continue to look at that which we need to address and come up with concrete actions to make the changes that we need to make.
Sean Moudry:
Yeah. So, what I’m hearing from this is: If I’m a real estate agent and I’m somebody who wants to make a commitment to make a change, what I’m hearing you say is get educated, right? You mentioned the book “Color of Law.” You mentioned the Newsday New York real estate investigation.
Nicole Beauchamp:
Yeah, I think it was November of last year, and I think if you Google Newsday and fair housing New York November, it will probably all come up. I think what’s always interesting, so here in New York, every two years, you renew your license. Part of those requirements is the fair housing, three and a half hours of fair housing. It’s always amazing. Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know and you need to address and correct yourself if you’re inadvertently wrong, and I’m going to say very generously inadvertently, and it’s just that Newsday piece was really something else, it’s that right here in New York. You think Long Island is 45 minutes away.
Sean Moudry:
Yeah, New York is the epicenter of the mixing pot, right?
Nicole Beauchamp:
It’s the epicenter of the mixing pot. I grew up here. I’ve always considered it to be just an amazing place to live. It’s an amazing place to work, it’s always been an amazing place to come and visit. I have friends who like, “You know what? I can’t live there because there’s just too many people, and there’s too much stuff, but I love to come visit and the energy of this city is like nothing else.” Even on my morning walk this morning, you still feel—you feel that energy. It’s there. We might all be walking around with our masks on and we’re standing six feet apart while waiting. I was walking by the Whole Foods and there were people waiting to go into Whole Foods, standing six feet apart, but that energy—it’s still here.
Sean Moudry:
Yeah. It’s still here. I’ve been in New York, Manhattan, twice. I agree, it is the most amazing place culturally. The energy, the vibe, it’s so much fun. I am also the person who is happy to get on a plane and go home and have my mountains.
Nicole Beauchamp:
You know, the brand new terminal at LaGuardia Airport I believe is opening this week, so when I saw that I said to myself, “Well, wow. I can’t wait until I decide that I feel comfortable enough to get on a plane again.” Yeah, New York City is great. We’ve got three major airports with lots of nonstop flights to go everywhere.
Sean Moudry:
You know, you gave me one more question and then we can wrap this up, but I was just listening to a podcast and they were talking about real estate changing due to the pandemic, and because of technology and the ability now that people are comfortable working anywhere. I think you heard that Twitter has announced that anybody can work from home. Do you see people moving out of cities?
Nicole Beauchamp:
I think people are going to look very carefully at how they want to live their lives and where. I think often for the last, let’s say the last 10-plus years, there are people who have wanted to work more from home, but companies have resisted or they only allow you to do it one day a week. Well, we’ve been at home for weeks and months now. All of us. So, clearly we can work remotely. Now the question becomes if I’m only coming into the office once a week or every other week for a day, how close to the city do I want to live? Because typically, in many cases, the closer you live a) sometimes it’s more expensive but b) sometimes you’re getting less space because you’re going for the convenience of the short commute.
Nicole Beauchamp:
So, maybe now I might want to live a little bit further out and have more space. So, I think that’s part of the conversations people will have with themselves, and lots of my clients here in New York, they are mostly thinking, “Well, if I didn’t already have a place that I could escape to on weekends or for a week or two, maybe now is that time to do that.” They’re not thinking, “I want to do that and I’m giving up my apartment in the city.”
Sean Moudry:
Right.
Nicole Beauchamp:
I think people are giving more thought to how do they spend their time. If I can now work three days a week—let’s just say hypothetically I could work three days a week from wherever I choose—where do I want to choose to do that? I mean 20-some-odd years ago when I would try and work from the far East End of Long Island, it was painful to do for an extended period of time because the technology wasn’t there. My cell phone reception was not great, the internet wasn’t great.
Nicole Beauchamp:
Now we’ve got cell phones, we’ve got internet-enabled tablets, so that freedom is going to have people looking at the lens of their life in terms of, “Where do I want to spend that time and what environment do I want to be in? Maybe I do want to be where I am right now, but maybe I just want more space because maybe we need a space for a dedicated home office space. Maybe I need a space for my exercise bike,” as I gesture in the direction of where my exercise bike actually is. “Maybe we need a space for all of those things.” So, you could end up thinking, “I want to stay where I am, but I need more space and can I afford more space?”
Sean Moudry:
So, two homes. Literally instead of having a summer home or a vacation home, you literally just have almost two full-time residences.
Nicole Beauchamp:
You would almost have two full-time residences. I think that as I’ve been talking to lots of my clients over the last three months, many of them have said, “You know what? I would consider buying somewhere where I could be there for weeks at a time, but that I could easily come back into the city whenever I need to, whether it’s for work or a personal or social engagement.” It’s almost like having two full-time residences.
Sean Moudry:
Yeah, wow.
Nicole Beauchamp:
So, I think we’re all going to think a lot. I mean, I sit in my apartment and I think, “Well, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea when I decided my home office was now going to go back to being a bedroom. Maybe I do want that home office again. Maybe in that home office I will shove the bike in, but can that be everybody’s home office?” I mean, I’m lucky because I only have an elderly parent who’s not trying to work from home, but imagine a life like you were talking about earlier. You’re trying to work, you’ve got a kid who’s doing their remote schooling, you’ve got a partner who also needs the space, and how does that manage? Especially if we’re doing lots of these Zoom calls, because before working from home usually meant OK, you’re on your computer, you’re dealing with your emails, you’re working in Excel spreadsheets. Now I spend most of my day, as I feel everybody does, on some kind of a Zoom or a conference call.
Sean Moudry:
Yep.
Nicole Beauchamp:
That takes up more space and energy than just sitting at a computer. So, maybe people do need dedicated spaces because no one wants to listen to me talk about the price per square foot in a new development for five hours a day.
Sean Moudry:
Yeah, that’s a great point. I love it. I really appreciate meeting you. This has been awesome. Is there anything else you would like to share with us?
Nicole Beauchamp:
No, I think that for people in real estate, I think we work and live in communities. We are members of those communities. Be a part of your community, and to me that always seems like the best way to go. You get to meet your neighbors, you connect with your colleagues. Take this time to go deeper. Take this time to decide what you want to do. Maybe you want to focus more on things that are very local because you don’t want to travel great distances. Maybe you want to take more time to spend with your family. Maybe you want to take more time, and give more time, and volunteer with charities. I mean, it could be anything. This almost feels like this really bizarre way and awful, absolutely awful, horrendous—I mean so many people who have lost their lives, lost their livelihood—but is this a moment where you stop and look at your life, you look at your business, and you go, “What is next for me, and how do I want to lay that out, and how do I want to get there?”
Sean Moudry:
Hmm.
Nicole Beauchamp:
Now at least in my case, I have spent weeks of not running around showing apartments. Not going in and out of taxis, and Ubers, and subways, and buses. I’ve had time to take long walks, and I’ve always liked to walk, but now more recently I’m getting back to walking. I’ve had time to sit and think without 10,000 interruptions, and that space to think has given me ideas to create, so I’m trying to focus on that because if I focus on everything else, I would lose my mind.
Sean Moudry:
I agree completely.
Nicole Beauchamp:
I would lose my mind and when you’re in a New York City apartment for several weeks on end, at one point I was like, “Well, I think I might want to try and go for a walk today,” and then I would go, “No. I don’t need to be outside. I have no need to be outside, and I’m just going to stay here.”
Sean Moudry:
Yeah.
Nicole Beauchamp:
When people were delivering stuff, I was being extremely generous with tips, realizing that these individuals, if they had that choice, if they could stay home, they probably would have. I think that our appreciation for the essential workers of all kinds, because I think in some ways we think of, “OK, well doctors and nurses,” but what about the people at the grocery stores? So that we could actually eat. The people here in New York, the bus drivers, the train operators. All of those people are in fact essential and deserve endless appreciation and praise.
Sean Moudry:
Yeah, that’s a great, that’s a great point.
Nicole Beauchamp:
Which they weren’t getting before. I think we were all just walking in our own little world, not paying attention, tap tap away on the phone. There are lots of people that contribute to a society, and everything that has to happen.
Sean Moudry:
Yeah, to protect the society. Yeah.
Nicole Beauchamp:
To protect the society, yeah.
Sean Moudry:
Yeah. Well, that was a wonderful, wonderful interview. I know we got off track.
Nicole Beauchamp:
No worries.
Sean Moudry:
I really appreciate your honesty, and your openness, and your heart, and your caring. It’s been really wonderful to meet you.
Nicole Beauchamp:
Yeah, this was great.
Over to You
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