Lunch & A Divorce Lawyer LIVE with Attorney Peter Olson and Broker Adriana Laura Cook
THIS MONTH:
This month we talk real estate with Broker Adriana Laura Cook. Adriana shares how she creates an atmosphere of comfort with her clients, plus, she gives very AUTHENTIC counsel concerning how she handled her own family law 'situation'.
Learn more About Broker Adriana Laura Cook at:
Peter: Welcome to 3rd Thursday: Lunch & A Divorce Lawyer. I'm attorney Peter Olsen, Chicago Family Law Group. Thanks for joining us. This month I am super-excited and appreciative to have Adriana Laura Cook. A licensed Real Estate Broker With Compass Out of Oak Park, is that right?
Laura: It's Compass Out of Oak Park, out of Bucktown, out of Winnetka. I have offices in different areas (specialty areas) and various pockets and neighborhoods throughout Chicago, but my area of expertise includes Chicago, The Oak Park area, River Forest, Forest Park, The North Shore and the Western Suburbs. So, that's a long answer to a short question.
Peter: What's your 30-second background in real estate? Are you doing it now, you've been doing it for how long? Why do you like it?
Laura: Why do I love it, because I do love it. First of all, I just want to say thanks again for having me, it's such a privilege to be part of this. I have really enjoyed watching and really absorbing your expertise in all of the related fields that you have provided and thank you so much for this opportunity to be here today. I love real estate. I've been doing it for 17 years, starting off in the Oak Park area, but you know like one year leads to the next and when you love what you do, it's not work at all.
Why do I love it? I love it because I interact with people. I love it because there are only so many times when you go through a pretty important time in your life when you get married, the birth of your children, but then you get to buy a house or a residence or your next home. Only a few times in your life and during that time, I get to be there and I'm privileged to be in such an integral role in that process. It is truly an honor to be part of this and to guide my clients through that. So, that's what I love about my job and it gives me “renewed energy” every day.
Peter: That's awesome! I sold a condo recently. I was surprised, everybody talks “Oh, what a great sellers’ market we're in” and we probably are and I don't want to go too down the road into Peter's life, but it was stressful. It was stressful, even though we're in a sellers’ market and you think like money falling from trees. I think that one of the most stressful things my wife and I went through was selling that place. We had three offers. We had one fall through, second fall through and then the third came through but for being in a sellers’ market, we were like “Oh, this just sounds so easy '' when you're just like reading the news. I was like “Oh, that was like the second worst time in our marriage or stressful. It wasn't horrible. The net result was good but….
Laura: No, it is stressful. I think because subconsciously we buy and sell all the time. How easy is it to click something on Amazon, “here I'm buying a bottle of mouthwash or whatever” and when you relate that activity buying or selling to real estate, all of a sudden it becomes so stressful because it is such an important part of your life. It's not just a trivial item that you buy or sell every day.
Peter: Just trying to tie this a little bit to a little family law, whatever it might be; maybe somebody's going through a divorce thinking about a divorce, post-divorce. Are you ever running into that situation? Why don't we talk a little bit about the hypothetical sort of seller side of real estate? Have you worked through situations where people are in a divorce scenario with some part of it, just kind of some thoughts, ideas, best/worst sort of things you've seen going down that side of a transaction?
Laura: Absolutely, well first of all in real estate when I represent clients, both on the buy or sell side, because it's so personal and emotions as you probably have witnessed selling your own condo this summer, emotions are heightened. It is an emotionally heightened situation. It's very emotionally charging and as a realtor, my number one priority and what I always strive for in a perfect world is to make sure everybody agrees.
In a divorce situation, obviously, the couple is not agreeing because they're moving their separate ways, but what we strive for in the process of the real estate sale or transaction or purchase is that they both agree. So, I offer my expertise, to provide a full picture of the entire process. I lead them through the process. In today's consumer world, we are dealing with a buyer and a seller that is extremely important. There's a lot of information out there, so my clients come to me on the buy side. They already know everything about the neighborhood, the schools. They already know everything about the 50 properties that are for sale. What I lead them through is the process and in that endeavor, I strive for creating an environment and an atmosphere of comfort in the sense that I always make myself aware of who is the person making the decision? Is it a joint decision?
I have dealt with a lot of situations where we had crisis scenarios in the sense that maybe someone passed away and now I’m dealing with some family going through the process of selling the family home or it is several siblings. So, what we do is create this atmosphere of total comfort. If someone says to me, I need to be the person, even though I’m not making the decision, I need to be perfectly informed at all times. So, sometimes we'll do group text. We'll do it from information systems in the sense that everybody knows everything there is to know at the level of the decision making.
Now that said, you could have a perfectly happy couple who's not divorcing that has a 100% different opinion about a specific home and I’ve had that. So, the husband loves it, the wife hates it – the wife loves it, the husband hates it. In that case, I create that space for both of them to come to that agreement. So, it is very-very important to allow for the space, you don't need to make a decision instantly. If this home is meant for you or when we're working with the sellers, if this is the right buyer, we can allow for the space for everybody to feel settled as we go through this.
Peter: Have you ever been in the scenario? What I’m thinking about is on my side of things, I’m representing somebody or I represented somebody in a divorce or something. Have you ever kind of caught in an awkward middle place where maybe the two sellers are a little bit conflictual – either divorced or going through one and then you also might have other players here. You could have Peter Olsen's mom's divorce attorney and Joe Smith his dad. Have you ever run into that?
Laura: Yes, I mean I would say I’ve been through a divorce myself. I’ve been privileged to be under your guidance in that process and I’m very-very happy to share from my own experience what we ended up doing and in the unique situation of my family, we ended up getting back together. I would say the main piece of advice that I would have, both as a realtor and as a person who was previously divorced and now worked things out is to “execute perfect honorable behavior and display perfectly honorable behavior.”
At that time, obviously you're getting a divorce, you're thinking “Well, here I’m so disappointed or disillusioned but I will choose to honor this process, this person because of course they are also created by God” and at the human level, you want to be friends and friendly and respectfully with everyone.
Also remember the children and in our case, we wanted for our daughter's sake to be perfectly honorable and never say anything bad about the other person. So, ultimately this led to us getting back together, but I would say “be kind”. You never know another person's perspective until you welcome [_9:26_] and I hope I’m not misquoting this but it is true – you can't possibly understand someone's perspective 100%. So, be kind. In real estate, it gets so conflicting and so adversarial, so quickly and it's important to remember to be kind and give the other person the benefit of the doubt.
Peter: I just read a book recently, I think it was called “Kindness Is Your Greatest Superpower” This is actually in a business book club, that's a bit of a tangent but it's usually the right move not that I’m always seeing that in all my situations but I’ll tell you what I’ve seen difficult or challenging issues with regard to selling a real estate like in a divorce or after a divorce, it's lack of specificity in a divorce judgment, where a lot of stuff is kind of open-ended in terms of the price maybe, how a price drops going to happen.
I remember a case years ago where they didn't have a court date because they're fighting about a realtor so that's something I know, I’ve become super aware of where a lot of this stuff is foreseeable, in other words.
Laura: Yes, I could definitely speak to that. It's very important to lay out the strategy, the sales strategy. So, let's just take for instance the scenario of a sale. We're selling now. I’m giving this as an example and a theory okay. So, let's say I’m selling to a couple and they're going through a divorce. People have selective amnesia in the sense and we say this all the time as agents, you give a number and you say this is our best-case scenario. If we could sell it at this number, this would be ideal. However, if we don't, if the market does not receive this number as the sales number for your house as the sales price then we will adjust the price.
So, I make it a point and a habit to lay out a pricing strategy. This is the best-case scenario – if this doesn't work, we'll go here, we'll go here and these are the intervals that we recommend adjusting the price. So, by really laying out the entire strategy for the couple in this case, it's important because you're really putting the decision making in their hands. And at all times as a realtor, I provide what the market is doing. So, we don't only look as a seller, we don't only look at what has recently sold in order to get the price, but we also always look at what's under contract. This is what the market is doing. These are the other properties that are currently selling, going under contract and why not us because this is how we compare to them.
In this instance, you're putting the decision-making power back into the client's hands; you're honoring them with knowledge and the knowledge to make the decision. More often than not, I have the sellers coming to me saying “okay we're ready, this is the time, let's adjust and let's see how the market responds”. If it doesn't respond favorably, okay let's adjust again.
You might ask why would you shoot yourself in the foot this way as a realtor, don't you want to sell it in like 2.5 seconds and keep your record high of having sold really quickly, doesn't that help you as an agent? My goal with my clients, the answer is that “I have lifetime relationships with my clients.” I work by referral only. So, my goal isn't to sell something in 2.5 seconds so that someone says “I wonder how much more we could have asked for this”, but to really honor my clients by listening to them. If they say to me, I want to sell this in two days, then we'll price it accordingly but if you have a little more time, I do recommend starting higher and see if the market receives the higher price.
Peter: I had a funny experience in a case, maybe a week ago where a judge literally had it in his back pocket (not literally his back pocket) but he actually had a realtor where he's like “if you guys can't agree on it, you're going to use this realtor. It's kind of funny. I think he used to practice family law before he was a judge because I know the guy a little bit, (kind of shows how old I’m getting is that like my peers are now being judges). It was kind of funny, it's like “that's not a bad little referral for a particular realtor. It's like “hey if you guys can't agree on it, you're using such and such. I think he sees what I’ve seen before, it's like if you don't have everything really tight and specific, it can be a point of contentiousness and unnecessary “court drama” Frankly.
Laura: Absolutely, there's only so much energy you have when you go through these emotionally heightened or emotionally charged situations and you can get to a standstill really quickly with everyone involved. So, it's very important to have a very carefully laid out strategy and if you don't, again if it gets heightened then someone has to step in and say, “okay fine you're going to have to do this if you don't agree. So, that's why I tried to create an atmosphere of full collaboration open transparently. I check in with my clients all the time, how are we doing. If you're in full communication, I think you can really avoid some of these frustrations that have happened in the past.
Peter: I feel like, when I’m in a divorce, as a lawyer, on the sell side I feel like somebody can sell, parties can sell, somebody can do a buyout, I’m going to keep the home, pay my wife half the equity or something. Once in a great while, you might keep the place, and almost do nothing, maybe the children or something have a couple more years left in the school district or something. So, I feel like I talked through the sales side a lot more, do you ever walk through somebody who's maybe in the midst of divorce, looking to purchase on the other end because that's the one I feel like I’m less expert on.
Laura: Again, when I work with buyers, there are a couple of ways that I would take this question. When I work with buyers in order to prevent emotional frustration, we really establish the ground rules, the search parameters, the purchase price, we established that very early on. The last thing you want to do working with the buyer as a realtor is, well what do you think, you want to buy.” They'll be like “okay this is the price point” and then they speak with their lender or they get everything, all of their finances in order and they're like “well actually this is the price point.” But now when you've already shown all of these homes to someone that ends up not being able to purchase for whatever reason, the other thing is that sellers really don't want you taking anyone through their property who is not fully qualified.
So, the frustration is really eliminated when you know exactly what someone is qualified for and so that's like way along the line of the conversation of “has the divorce happened, do they know what they can afford, do they know all their financial pictures?” So, you really want to know and my recommendation is, don't enter into this process before you know everything for sure and you're fully qualified because you're in a market like this especially. You could see a property right now and there could be two or three offers on it already, and that agent might have even accepted and not had a chance to go back and put it under contract.
So, you really want to be fully qualified, put your best foot forward and know exactly what you're able to, walk away from your divorce scenario and have that qualification pre-approval in your hand or in your agent's hand before you see that property. Because if you left the home, that agent can get you in there within hours and the home could be yours. Don't go into something just with, “oh I think I might be able to do this but I’m not quite sure”. Give yourself the time to really absorb what's going on.
Peter: Immediately after a pending divorce, it’s a whole another layer. What's your family budget look like, post-separation? I think if there's an open court case, I think a lender might give you a little trouble on that too even if it's just sorts of an innocuous divorce too, so sometimes I feel like you might need to do a cash deal.
Laura: Well, in my situation, I think the best thing we could have done is we actually did a mediation under your guidance and with your help, but what I did was the best invested penny that I have put in (not penny more than that), we got a financial planner. She came and analyzed all of the finances of the family and she said if you were to split everything this way, this is what it would look like. The financial planner was amazing and she was invaluable to the process. There was a lot of heavy emotions involved going and saying goodbye to one life and getting ready to enter another journey, but at the same time she really guided us and I think if there is any opportunity for that, do yourself a favor and hire that person who really has all the expertise to look at this from an unbiased standpoint and guide you through. Then you know exactly what you have, what you're walking away with and what that's going to look like.
The first thing she asked me interestingly was you know what your lifestyle is, tell me how you live and let's establish how much you really need to maintain this lifestyle or go this way or that way. It was a very clear picture. There's really no guessing around here. So, with that in hand, then you know what you can go and buy.
Peter: That's great advice. A couple months ago, I was in the same interview situation, I talked to a friend of mine who's a mortgage lender. I really learned a lot just about how the lender's side looks at different streams of income that come from a divorce; how child support is actually viewed differently than maintenance or spousal support? It's very interesting, I didn't know at all. To me, it's like this is a stream of money whether my clients receive it or pay it, but I think “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac” look at child support and maintenance as fairly different things, it was kind of weird, it was very strange to me.
Laura: In some cases, child support will stay on for this amount of time and maintenance won't or will and so yes, the lenders look at it very-very specifically. As a realtor, I not only refer to excellent collaborators, great home inspectors, wonderful lenders and attorneys, what I enjoy doing is, building a strong team around my clients whether on the seller-buy side. We can enter through this process in as seamless a way as possible and that is the guidance and the expertise that we provide by not just like, “Oh I heard about lending 1, 2, 3, and I think I’m just going to go with them because that's the commercial that I just saw on TV.
No, you really need to have someone that has provided an excellent level of service and that's why I continue to refer to you Peter because you are excellent in our own collaboration. Everyone that I’ve referred you to, well you can refer to me for my friend Debbie and so everyone that I referred you to, has been so happy with your expertise. So, thanks for that.
Peter: I appreciate that. We keep our little list, we call it internally. We have our list of business partners. Like you and the immigration attorney and the realest, I'm trying to be focused and specialized as I think you are because that's the only way you become an expert. Other things come up through family law, real estate, life where you can be that point of whatever expert to help others.
I think you are only the second person I’ve run into in my career who's gotten married again to the same person, so congratulations and I was excited not to hear that. I know yours at a more personal level than the other one I know.
Luara: It was really interesting because even at the time when we were getting divorced, I think it was our mediator or someone or maybe you or the other attorney has said to us, I have never seen anyone go through this process in such an honorable and amicable way. I thought, well that's nice, and at that time I had no idea but eventually it would lead to getting back together. You take everything as a learning process and I’m grateful for everything, I wouldn't have done it in any other way but it's important to be kind.
Peter: I was just looking at your bio as we wrap up here, do you speak five languages?
Laura: Yes, I do.
Peter: What are they and which of them do you really use a lot outside of English? I was curious because that's very unique. I'm 25% Spanish, so I’m 1.25 but 5 is pretty impressive.
Luara: I speak Romanian, that's my native language; I’m from Romania. I was born there and I moved here in 1987 with my family. I speak German. In Romania, there are Germans, Hungarians and Serbians, so they have schools for those ethnicities, so I went to a German school because my parents chose to send me to a bilingual school so I speak German fluently. Then I also speak French, Italian and of course English. so Italian served me very well as we were just in Italy in the last few weeks and I was able to speak only Italian while I was there, so that was great.
Peter: You can handle Spanish too then, can't you.
Laura: I understand Spanish and it's always interesting when someone addresses me in Spanish or speaks and then I can answer what they said, but I would answer back in English, but I do understand it quite well.
Peter: Adriana thanks again for joining us. Just the last question. Your ideal kind of client customer and it's a two-part question, where can somebody find you if they need a real estate broker in Chicagoland.
I checked out your reviews which were all great, but I want to see your picture on the website.
Laura: Let me give you my number, it's (312) 497-2044 and my email is adriana.cook@compass.com. You can find me under Agents at Compass, but I would say that my ideal client, I don't want to be too vague here because I really have represented clients in all sorts of situations. I have had buyers who were ready to buy a home and within the first 30 minutes, we were able to write a contract and five weeks later they were in that home. I should say four weeks later. Then I’ve had other buyers who took two years to make a decision and now they're quite happily living in their home nine years later and then same with sellers.
So, I really am very open to working with buyers and sellers on the commercial, residential side and also landlords enlisting their rentals. So, it's just been such an honor working with my clients.
Peter: So, in 2021, your greatest number of deals closed have been in what community that you've been an agent on.
Laura: Are you saying geographic?
Peter: I’m just wondering what's your top community, like I’ve sold X number of properties in “X is his highest number.”
Laura: I would say I’ve sold quite a bit in Oak Park and River Forest, Forest Park and then I’ve also sold a little bit in Chicago here and there, so maybe we'll start off with the Oak Park area and kind of branch out a little bit.
Peter: I was just pinning you down a little, so…
Laura: I love pinning down questions. Thanks again for joining us Adriana. I appreciate you jumping on here, professional colleague, friend, former client and have a great close to 2021. We can finish strong. Maybe you'll have a nice warm winter this year and you can just go crazy right to the New Year.
Laura: Exactly. It's been an honor, it's been a joy always collaborating with you and have me back anytime, happy to join.
