Biz Buzz: Christopher Friend, Property Friends Group, Edina Realty

Business: Property Friends Group, Edina Realty

Your Name: Christopher Friend

Job Title: REALTOR®

Give us a brief overview of your business and what services you provide the community:

In 2013, I left the corporate IT world to join Edina Realty as a Realtor. As a full-service broker with over 75 office locations, Edina Realty has provided me with the resources to offer clients a convenient one-stop shop for start-to-finish highly competitive resources for brokerage, mortgage, title, insurance, warranty, relocation, and more. Even though my office is located in the downtown Minneapolis North Loop, my team provides a range of skilled, detail-oriented, and friendly services to sellers, first-time and repeat buyers, and investors in the Twin Cities metro area and occasionally beyond.

How many years have you been in business?

This is my 11^th year in business. 2023 marked the completion of my 10^th year in real estate with my team completing nearly 450 transactions to date. We are honored that over the past several years our team’s sales volume has placed us in the top 3% – 5% in our brokerage of over 2000 agents. 

What’s something unique we should know about your business?

Early in my career, I put additional focus on the condo and townhome marketplace which has the added complexities and nuances of being a part of common interest communities (CICs), managed by homeowner associations (HOAs), and having additional governance and consumer protections provided by specific state statutes. Over the years, I have heard several negative opinions about HOAs and some of those have been warranted. If having total control over decision-making for the structural components of your unit, any limited common elements (not yours but you have exclusive use, such as a balcony), or that which needs to be addressed at the community level, then perhaps an HOA isn’t for you.

However, if an HOA is done right there can be several advantages provided by this style of living. One example would be that HOAs have governing rules meant to protect a reasonable homeowner from another that may not be a good fit for the community. Another example is that HOAs are required to include “reserves” in their annual budget for future replacements of components which are the responsibility of the HOA. Some examples of these forecasted costs could be a roof, siding, windows, and more. These sometimes-large expenditures are costs shared by the community whereas similar types of costs would likely be fully borne by a single-family homeowner. It’s important to remember that HOAs are usually run by a board of directors fully comprised of just the homeowners from the same community, so their decisions affect them as much as the rest of the homeownership. If I were to give some advice to a new homeowner, it would be to attend the board meetings, stay abreast of communications from the board and property management, and perhaps even volunteer to become a board member! Even that much said, I’m just scratching the surface on the HOA topic and would be happy to field any specific questions from the readership.

Perhaps more valuable to some, we know the ins and outs of many of the prominent condo buildings in the area, so we are a great resource to assist buyers in searching for properties that are a good fit and then being able to efficiently show building grounds and amenities. As you might imagine, this domain expertise is equally as crucial for delivering an effective and smooth sales process for our seller clients. Either way, our business transcends condos & townhomes as the other half of our clientele has focused on single-family homes in the Twin Cities metro area. The good news is we are well-equipped and have been assisting clients interested in purchasing, selling, or both across multiple housing product categories throughout our region.

What’s your favorite thing about your job?

I am passionate about assisting people to achieve their goals and dreams. This can look quite different from person to person, especially depending on whether one is a seller, buyer, or perhaps both at the same time. Sellers often value our ability to smoothly manage a complicated process to achieve the best possible net proceeds on their sale with the least amount of stress and market time. As a buyer, and perhaps a first-time buyer, entering the market can be a daunting task especially with multiple offers still being commonplace in certain inventory categories. Buyers are usually about to make the biggest purchase in their life, and they appreciate detailed guidance on the entire process including assistance finding reputable and price-conscious lenders, negotiating pricing and terms, navigating complex inspections, and confidently getting through the closing process. And if one is both a seller and a buyer, there is the added complexity and appreciation for creative solutions to smoothly stitch the selling and buying processes together.

What’s the best thing about working with the LGBTQ community?

What a timely question. I reflect on a conversation I just had with a client who is a part of our community. They mentioned how comfortable it is for them to work with someone who belongs to the same community and feel truly at ease there would be no unconscious prejudice or preconceived notion of how one should live. Just to be clear, I am not saying that an ally to the LGBTQ community wouldn’t be a good fit for many; however, I am grateful that I can help some feel even more comfortable with the buying and selling processes. But there are many other nuances, and I have to say it, potential challenges to being LGBTQ buyers and sellers who comprise about 5+% of those in the market according to a 2023 survey by the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

An example from the nuance angle, for some members of the LGBTQ community the type of home, the function of the spaces, and the importance of convenience to amenities vs. work or other can differ greatly from that of the non-LGBTQ community. When working with fellow members of the LGBTQ community, I place extra attention on understanding what is important to a client’s lifestyle (not to be confused with calling LGBTQ a “lifestyle”). I like to think that I am less pre-disposed than a non-LGBTQ individual to make certain unconscious assumptions of what would be important to a client.

From a potential challenge perspective, we haven’t discussed the D-word yet and I would be remiss to not touch on it at least lightly. We all know that “discrimination” of anyone in the LGBTQ community is simply wrong, but what you might not know, is that along with sexual orientation, gender identity is also a protected class under Minnesota state law. It’s perhaps comforting to some that we live in a progressive state as this is not a federal protection. But as we know, just because there is a law that prohibits discrimination that doesn’t mean isn’t real and isn’t happening. When I represent clients from our LGBTQ community, I have a natural and trained awareness of navigating the transaction landscape to avoid the effects of potentially discriminatory practices by other parties. We probably all can agree that it’s far easier to avoid an issue than to litigate it in the courts.

Does your business have anything new, fun or unique happening on the horizon?

Spring Market is here! Interest rates have been on the rise for a couple of years, and we have seen some softening in the rates since last-year highs. If things continue to pick up, we may be growing the team in the future.

If you weren’t doing your current job, what would you be doing?

That’s a tough question as it’s tough to think of another line of work that would allow me to affect and assist people as much directly, materially, and positively!