Neil Binder, co-founder of Bellmarc Realty and author of four real estate books, sat down with The Real Deal to
talk about the market, cutting costs at the firm to survive the
downturn and how a cheating girlfriend got him into the real estate
business. 

There are tons of predictions about when the market will bottom. Do you have one? Yes, and mine is the right one. (laughs) It already has. There are
three [economic] states that economists talk about: one is an L — we
go down and we stay down, one is a V — we go down and we pop up and
the W — we go down, we go up, we go down, we go up. I truly believe
[this] will be a W.

How are you trying to cut costs? We closed our main location,
we consolidated staff, we repositioned our advertising a little bit and
made cuts wherever we could make them and still be able to service
customers. Nothing was sacred. I think we were the first ones to get
out there and start doing things and everybody said ‘Oh, Bellmarc’s in
trouble, Bellmarc’s going down, Bellmarc’s bankrupt.’ I’ve been in
business 30 years, and for at least 20 of them, someone has told me I’m
going bankrupt. We just had our 30th anniversary. [more]