Rising from the rubble — a real estate giant

Gene Choo Producer • E-mail

SAN FRANCISCO — As Winston Churchill once said, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

Among the optimists after the 1906 earthquake that devastated the city were a college dropout named Colbert Coldwell and a traveling salesman named Benjamin Banker.

Seeing promise where many others only saw pandemonium, the young men's drive led to the creation of one of the most venerated names in American real estate: Coldwell Banker.

Opportunity out of disaster
“It was leveled — there was nothing left!” exclaimed Bill Banker, the son of Benjamin Banker, as he strolled down Sutter Street in downtown San Francisco. “A few buildings stood but the typical streets were just rubble.” 

Banker, an energetic 84-year-old, was relating the story told to him by his father of the scene of destruction in San Francisco after the estimated 7.8 magnitude earthquake stuck the city on April 18 a hundred years ago.

The massive quake struck at 5:12 am while most San Franciscans were still in bed. An estimated 6,000 people were killed and more than half of the city’s 400,000 residents were left homeless.

“My father ... came to San Francisco just after the earthquake as a meat slicing machine salesman from Illinois, working for a Chicago meat packing company,” recalled Banker.  “He said the city was utterly a mess. With all the hotels gone, he had to sleep in an old boarding house. And to top it all off, most of the city’s butcher shops were destroyed, so he was left with little business.”

But while looking for some new ways of making a living, Banker stumbled upon a part-time job selling lots in an area of San Francisco called Visitacion Valley. 

“You didn’t need a real estate license at that time,” said his son. “And father sold four lots on his first day. Father was hooked and he quit his job as a salesman for good.”

Instead, Banker took a job with a real estate company called W.B. McGeary. And that's where fate played its hand — the firm was located in the same building where a young 23-year old U.C.-Berkeley dropout had also set up shop as a real estate broker.

His name was Colbert Coldwell.

Introducing ethics to real estate
Coldwell, in fact, had got into the real estate business earlier than Banker, having established the firm Tucker, Lynch and Coldwell immediately after the quake with the goal of introducing what was a new concept in the real estate business at the time: ethics. The new firm was “based on the principles of honesty, integrity and service,” according to Coldwell Banker’s Web site. However, Coldwell's first partners fairly soon left the firm, leading to the partnership, formed in 1913, that was to transform the real estate business.

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“What people don’t realize was that during the quake, most of the public records were destroyed in the fire,” said Bill Banker. “You had no idea who owned what. So unscrupulous brokers would put up false ‘For Sale’ signs on a pile of rubble and tried to profit from the sale of properties that weren’t theirs to sell.”

Coldwell emphasized that no one in his company could personally profit from the sale of a property. (In fact, up until the early 1970s, no Coldwell Banker broker could own personal property other than his own home.)  “They gave the buyer the benefit of all profit and represented the seller for a commission only,” said Bill Banker.

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