Cindy Barnes hands it over

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SOUTH CHARLOTTE – Cindy Barnes is the Allen Tate Realtors agent in the ads with her arms outstretched, the one demanding that we all “Hand it over” to her.

So we will. Stat.

Without further introduction, here’s a behind-the-hands chat, at a Panera Bread near two parcels of residential lots Barnes has for sale on Providence Road north of Interstate 485, with a “hand-it-over kind of gal.”

Where are you from? Warsaw, Illinois. Spelled like in Poland. It’s on the Mississippi where Iowa, Illinois and Missouri come together.

Just upriver from Hannibal, Mo. Where Huck and Jim tried to raft to freedom. Right. Mark Twain country. My mother was the editor of the town’s weekly newspaper, and my father was bipolar in an interesting way; he was a contractor and jazz musician, and during the Depression, the latter often paid the rent. When I read both of those books – “Huckleberry Finn” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” – I saw a lot about myself. I was Scout in “Mockingbird,” watching as my mom, like Atticus, stood up to the city powers. And like Huck, I was free to roam the town, but knowing that there were parents out there, too. I was one of eight children, and my dad used to say that if something happened to one of us, well, he had seven others.

Ha. When I was a kid, I slept on top of those big rolls of paper in the back shop while my brothers worked on the presses for that week’s edition. And I was in jazz clubs before I was 9. Dad didn’t think there was anything wrong with me going along to night spots with a jazz band. He had a big band and would play swing at local dances. Later, when jazz became about standards and bebop, he was in trios and quartets – whatever they could pull together.

That’s a great story. You were telling me another great story about having those lots on Providence for sale when we were shooting your picture. I’ve had these properties for some time – four groups of lots in all, the two on Providence, and two others – but we knew when the downturn hit that it was not a time to sell. Even if a builder wanted them, there was no financing for lots. A highly placed person in representing builders – I can’t tell you who, but I go to him every once in a while for perspective on the market – has been making fun of me for the past few years for having all these lots. I saw him recently in an elevator, and he looked at me and said, “I bet you think you’re hot stuff this year.”

Buildable lots in desirable locations are hard to find – that’s one of the big stories of 2013 in the Charlotte homebuilding industry. Does that make you hot stuff? I represent a client who has the lots you saw on Providence Road, eight in one location and nine in another. And I have seven off Alexander Road that are closing next week, and I just sold a package of lots, not contiguous, in Midwood, to LiveWell Homes. The ones on Providence, if they were developed, those lots would have sold yesterday. My client may develop them, but we’re trying this way first. Some Realtors are strictly land Realtors, which I’m not. But this is a good year to have what I have.

What brought a Midwestern girl to Charlotte? My ex-husband was relocated here with his company in 1983. We thought we’d be here for two or three years. But we decided that whatever it took, we’d stay here. He changed jobs and we raised our two daughters here, and they still live here with my very nice sons-in-law. We consider this our home. All of us have had chances to be somewhere else, and we all decided to stay. They are all four entrepreneurs, and they’re doing just great in Charlotte. It’s a city, but it’s still accessible. You can come here and become part of a community. All you have to do is say, “How do I help?” And the next month, you are president of that group! You have to be careful. I’m a big supporter of the arts, and in international things.

How’d you get into the sales racket? My ex-husband was a national salesman and then became the general manager of a company, and he said – boy, I’m really giving him too much credit. But he said teaching and sales are the same thing; I had taught piano and German and English as a second language.

Was he right, this ex-husband of yours? He was absolutely right. A good salesman doesn’t sell. A good salesman educates so the buyer can make a good decision.

And the seller, too, right? Right. Selling comes down to three things. 1) Location. I can’t do anything about that and you can’t do anything about that. 2) Price. Here we have some control, but within parameters. And 3) Staging and condition. With HGTV, a new bar has been raised. People now have an expectation before they ever see the house how it should be done. So we stage, and unlike others, we don’t charge a fee. An assistant and I do the staging. We ask for a small budget, maybe $500, but we do the work for free.

All the world’s a . . . Stage. I walk into a house, and the key to staging a house is: What is the first thing I notice? If it is something nice, it should be on top of something that is key to the house. If you’ve got an orchid, it should not be a low coffee table. It should be on the mantle. Distractions should be removed, even if they are nice distractions. I had a client who was a travel agent and an antique collector. That house was full of the most beautiful and exotic things from all around the world. But after I would take a potential buyer through and ask what they thought of the living room, they would say, “I don’t remember the living room, but did you see those coronation cups???” What you see defines the house for the rest of the day you have your clients out. If you have one badly painted room, it’s not the house with six beautiful rooms; it’s the one with that awful room. People remember the negatives. Outside, it’s often a good idea to remove mature shrubs, and maybe don’t replace them all; just put some pine straw down. That way, it looks like new construction.

Nice tactic. You survived the downturn rather well. I’m no different from any other agent: It was tough. I am rather unique, however, in that I never pulled back on my marketing budget. Some people just dropped out of sight. They never came back. When the upturn finally came, I was still there. People called me and said exactly that back to me. They said we need someone who is aggressive and in the business to stay.

Hand it over, baby. Hand it over. Ha.There’s a lot of buzz in the business about “relationships.” Developing relationships and building a business on relationships. People don’t call me for a relationship. They call me to go in there and get a job done. Any relationship that develops develops based on that. My kind of client wants that. I tend to wear business suits, and not by accident. I’m there to do business.

And that explains the sleek Mercedes out there in the parking lot? It’s just part of the agent package. I handle plenty of $100,000 buyers, and plenty of $1 million buyers, too. If I show up at a high-end home, they have to be convinced that I understand their wants and needs and lifestyles. Again, I’m there to do business.

C’mon: Hand. It. Over. All right.

(Barnes thrusts out her hands out and says:)

Hand it over!

Thank you. You know, I wasn’t sure I liked that at first. But it does define me very well. Somebody I know in marketing helped me come up with that. At first, they suggested, “Hand it over, please.” I’m not a “please” kind of gal. I’m not needy. But I am a hand-it-over kind of gal. We’ve had that same ad for seven or eight years, and now when I arrive, they already have an expectation. The brand and the product should be the same. Now I’ll be going through SouthPark Mall or somewhere, and people will recognize me. They’ll look at me like they know me, and I panic, wondering: “Is this someone I should know?” “Is this someone who knows one of my daughters?” And then they come right up to me and do this:

(Barnes thrusts out her hands and says:)

“Hand it over!”

My editor said we should interview you because she bet you’d be “a real fireball.” Are you a real fireball? I am a real fireball. I’m a small-town girl who’s been through a lot of adversity who wouldn’t give up, whose family wouldn’t give up.

Adversity? I lost my parents when I was still relatively young. My father died when I was in high school, and my mother when I had my first child. My ex-husband and I worked our way through a lot of things, but we weathered them. And, you know, you have to show up every day.

I know you should never ask a lady, but we’re a newspaper and I have to: How old are you? Old enough. I have married daughters. That’s enough.

C’mon. Hand it over. Nuh-uh. And I’ll tell you why. I plan on being in this business a very, very long time. I see no reason to date myself.