By Patrick Lapinski
Buying or selling a house is one of the biggest decisions we make as a family or individually. Transactions of this magnitude can be life-altering events. For that reason alone, working with a realtor is a good choice. The National Association of Realtors reported that in 2023, 89% of home buyers used a realtor or broker, with virtually the same percentage for owners selling a house.
The decision on whom to choose to represent your interests is often fraught with uncertainty, mixed with a tinge of anxiety. Therefore, it is not unusual for potential buyers and sellers to trust the opinions and experiences of friends, family and work associates to help guide them to the right person or company.
Additionally, people read the customer reviews of potential realtors with fine scrutiny, frequently making their choices based on the experiences of total strangers. Word of mouth is deemed a very reliable source of information and one of the best marketing tools used by realtors.
In Duluth, Messina & Associates Real Estate has consistently been voted the best real estate company in the area, landing at the top of the list more often than not.
“That’s what our clients voted us. We didn’t stuff the ballots,” laughs owner Frank Messina, who says the numbers tell a story that says “people trust us and they feel comfortable with us.”
He’s quick to point out “the cream rises to the top,” in his characteristic humble but confident tone. “If you go to Google and look at Messina & Associates Real Estate, I think we had 4.8 rating with 95 reviews compared to other companies that may have 100 agents, but only have a four-star rating with five reviews.”
Frank Messina has been selling homes for more than 50 years, not a bad career for a young man from Long Island, New York, who came to Duluth looking for a teaching job. As it turns out, Messina’s life has been somewhat serendipitous. After graduating from college with a degree in history, Frank also received his draft notice, which he circumvented by joining the Army Airborne.
“I wanted to be with a group of guys that I could depend on if there were any problems, but at Fort Lewis, Washington, five hours before my flight was leaving for Vietnam, they pulled off 40 of us to fill up an airborne unit in Mainz, Germany.”
After being discharged, Messina’s pursuit of a job as a history teacher came up empty. “History teachers were a dime a dozen at that time,” recalled Messina. “There were no openings in Hermantown, Duluth, Superior or Proctor. A friend of mine told me about a company that was starting up, Apollo Realty. They were looking for salesmen and I was desperate to find something. So, I interviewed and they said they would accept me.”
Within a few months Messina took the real estate exam, got his license, and became a realtor with Apollo Realty. “Within my first year I just felt this was something I really enjoyed doing; I like working with people and helping people out.”
Messina spent the next 10 years of his young life learning the real estate business, working with several local companies until he reached the point where he felt he could do a better job representing clients than the firms he had been working for.
“In December 1981, my partner at that time, Elliot Zunich and I started Messina-Zunich Realty. Then, in December of 1999, when my partner wanted to get out of the real estate business and just go into the mortgage business, it became Messina & Associates.”
In those formative years, Messina figured out that selling real estate was more than just a business transaction. In his estimation, it’s all about developing and nurturing relationships with people.
“Basically, after your first couple of years, you build up a book of business,” he said. For example, Messina learned that if you impressed the parents who went along when you were showing houses to their children, when it came time for them to sell, they’d call him. Also, people he sold homes to, or for, would often refer other people his way.
“So, you build through referrals a book of business, and so long as you take good care of clients and treat them like friends and a relationship, rather than a transaction, you’ll always have business,” explained the affable Messina. “Conversely, the realtors that treated their clients as transactions, when the market would turn, they would be the first ones to get out of the business, because nobody would call them back for repeat business. I specialized in marketing seller’s homes, and people that I hadn’t even worked with would call me up because they liked the way I marketed homes, leading to more business.”
Houses are also bought and sold as an investment with a property to be used as a source of income. A lot of these clients live outside of the Duluth area and don’t have the resources to properly manage their investment. For many years Messina & Associates stayed away from this part of the industry.
“For years we would sell investor’s properties for income, and they’d say, ‘Hey, listen, I live in Minneapolis, but I think this is a good rental area. I don’t want to be in charge of maintaining it and collecting the rent and qualifying the tenant. Is this something you do?’”
After years of saying no, Messina began saying ‘why not?’ and started Messina Property Management.
Duluthian Gary Doty and his wife Marcia have a long history of doing business with Messina, buying and selling, or flipping, homes.
“I had a really good agent and when she retired somebody suggested Frank, and we use him for everything that we do now,” said the former mayor of Duluth. “I just love the man. He’s got the greatest personality; he’s got a great sense of humor. He treats you as though you are family.”
While personality is important when choosing a realtor, Doty says Messina’s knowledge of the industry and the market is critical when it comes to selling or buying a house. “He’s been in the business for so long he’s got all the contacts that are necessary. He knows the agents that are in town, he knows the bankers, he knows the people at the title companies. He knows everything you need to know to be a really successful agent. Plus, he’s got the personality and the drive to get it done.”
As a company, Messina & Associates Real Estate has a roster of about 50 agents who work throughout the Northland, with a modest staff of six employees, consisting of three administrative assistants and two associate brokers/realtors under the leadership of Frank Messina.
“Messina & Associates is kind of unique because it’s almost like a boutique company. We’re locally owned and we have been for many, many years. We’re not under the umbrella of a franchise, so we really specialize in the local community and take pride in the fact that we are locally owned and operated,” says Duluth native and Associate Broker/Realtor Matt Privette. As a full-time staff member, Privette is responsible for the training that keeps the agents up to date with information throughout the year. Messina & Associates has multiple office locations, along with websites, software and all the tools needed for their agents to be successful independent contractors.
Training is conducted via video conferencing platforms like Zoom or Google Meet, supplementing weekly in-person training. Mandatory meetings are rare, reserved usually for topics like legal form changes says Privette.
“When you’re an independent contractor and your livelihood depends on your skill, most of our agents understand that it’s just fiscally responsible to come to training to further their education,” says Privette. Otherwise, realtors can access the information from anywhere by logging into meetings broadcast across their community of agents.
Privette is one of a “new generation” of realtors; those born during the advent of the internet and raised in the world of social media. “I started when I was 19, so this will be my 20th year in the business,” he says. “As a younger agent, you have to be way more tech savvy. You’re definitely expected to be prominent on social media platforms – Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, all of these things. Younger agents have to be proficient and be able to communicate with their clients correctly and professionally. It’s a different way to do business than maybe an older agent in their 60s, 70s, like Frank, who might have a little bit of presence on those platforms, but their clientele might be older as well and used to talking on the phone, or communicating more via email. You have to cater to the age demographic of the client you’re working with at any given time.”
Aside from that, Privette says the flexibility of being able to work when you need to work and setting his own schedule has always been appealing. Like most realtors, Privette jokes that he’s going to work when everyone else is getting off work.
Another big change since Frank Messina entered the business is how homes are shown and sold. There is still the legwork of opening doors and doing walk-throughs with clients, but the traditional peek inside at an open house announced by a yard sign methodology has been eclipsed by a lot of tech work up front by realtors before a property hits the market.
Most home sellers have no idea of the effort it takes to put a house on the market, says Messina. Everyone from home inspectors to furnace technicians to roofing specialists can be in the mix. Messina & Associates have seen it all and have a preferred vendor list, which they provide to their buyers and sellers to assist them in the process.
“These vendors are people that we’ve used for the last 30 years,” says Messina. “We’re not looking for any rebates or kickbacks. All we want to do is take really good care of our clients. Making it look simple and seamless requires a lot of work.”
Making a house look attractive has also become an art of its own.
How a property is “staged” is also important in today’s business climate. “When I started in this business,” recalls Privette, “I was taking my own photographs, I measured my own homes. Now, if I’m not hiring a professional photographer or media company to do the photography, videography, floor plans and 3D virtual tours, I’m behind. All of these tools are now utilized when I list the property. That’s just a given thing you have to be able to do as a realtor.”
There’s an old saying, merchandise well displayed is easily sold.
“There’s a big difference in living in a home and selling a home. When you live in the home, you live in it the way you want. If you want to have a pool table in the dining room, be my guest. Do whatever you want,” says Messina. “In today’s market, when it comes time to selling, we’re not trying to appeal to you the seller. We’re trying to appeal to the buyers to want your house.”
In other words, if you’ve got a lot of stuff in each room, it’s going to make your house look small, so you need to have a stager come out and tell you what to do to remove some of this furniture to make the house visually appealing.
Clearing out the clutter is only part of prepping a house.
“Maybe 10 years ago, dark paint on the walls was in style,” continues Messina. “Well, light colors are in style right now. So, we tell them, if you want to attract more buyers have it painted with the new colors. I had a president from one of the banks who had his house listed for something like three months with another company. It didn’t sell. He’d bought it maybe eight to 10 years prior, and he had the dark colors in there. We told him his house looked too dark, here are the colors of paint you should be putting in the interior of the house. He didn’t really like it, but he did it. The house wasn’t on the market for two weeks and we had a buyer because they walked in and loved the way the house looked.”
For Messina & Associates, it all comes back to that relationship the realtor builds with the client. Liking people and taking good care of them continues being the mantra Frank Messina follows.
“The more you are concerned about the buyers and sellers over yourself, of putting them first, it works to your advantage. Anytime you think that, ‘Oh, I’m going to lose a commission,’ well, don’t even think that way,” cautions the veteran realtor. “Help that buyer find that house. Help that seller sell their house, and the financial rewards will come after that, but put them first.”
When asked what gets him going every morning, other than his dose of coffee, Matt Privette says there’s an emotional component to helping people buy or sell a house that he finds extremely rewarding.
“When people buy and sell houses, they could be going through any given situation of life at that time, and you just don’t know what it is. You don’t know what they’re going through at that time, so sometimes closing on a property, for somebody who’s buying their first home, is an extremely huge step in their life,” says Privette. “It’s really rewarding to help them into that first step of life. On the flip side, sometimes selling a house is emotional, because it could be the home that grandma’s lived in her whole life and is now moving into a town home; there’s just always that emotional aspect attached to it that gets you invested into the relationship with the client.”
When it comes time for you to buy a new home, or sell your old one, Messina & Associates Real Estate are ready to help you take that big step while keeping your best interests in mind.
Patrick Lapinski is a freelance writer who grew up in Superior.
